Card Of Fools
by Myurra-K
Summary: The biggest lie Tony Stark ever told himself was that he didn't need anybody. However, not all pain is expressed in words, and while his team seemingly fail to notice his depression, an unlikely immortal picks up on his loneliness. To what end will Loki use his weakness? "So is this the man behind the mask? Or is this but another mask, with another man beneath?" FrostIron
1. I: Wheel Of Fortune

Note: _Sexual situations, nothing too graphic. Swearing. Slight violence. Slash._

* * *

**Card Of Fools**

**I**  
_Wheel Of Fortune_

.:.  
'

The night he first felt this strange feeling of being watched, it was a dreary evening to a drearier day, one of lacked inspiration and devoid of the vibrant energy that Tony Stark had come to crave. It was the first night he slept alone in his tower for weeks, seeing as Banner was only flying in tomorrow afternoon, Thor was with Jane, and the others were on unspecified business. A man never truly realised how impossibly small he was until he was the only living being within one of the largest skyscrapers in the city.

Tony had always felt alone in the world, but in the midst of his thirties, when the only woman who genuinely wanted to be around him also wanted to keep him at an arm's length at all times, he felt himself drowning, eye-deep in the consequences of his own pride.

Half of his problem was that he could have anyone he wanted. He'd already had everyone he'd wanted, and the moment he wanted someone else, the row of hearts on his shelf was forgotten. He'd had Pepper's love in his hands, then dropped it carelessly when he turned around not a month later and decided he really liked the way that woman's ass looked in that dress.

He'd shattered everything in his greed.

_Perhaps,_ he wondered, staring out the repaired stretch of windows Loki had tossed him through, watching the lights gleam and glitter in the cityscape before him,_ I should be feeling lost. I don't know what I feel._

_Lonesome._

It was a quiet thought, not his own, almost whispered in his mind. He glanced quickly at his reflection in the window, noting that he was indeed alone, and brought his fingers to the shell of his ear, feeling the strangely cold flesh.

A chill rolled down each notch of his spine slowly, and quickly he checked his other ear, puzzled to find it felt warmer than the other. Running his thumb over the still cooled flesh, it occurred to him that he probably looked very strange stood there, holding his ears, and quickly dropped his hands to his sides.

They felt awkward, heavy, as though someone wouldn't stop staring at him and he had no idea what to do with them that wouldn't look forced to their eyes. He sucked in a deep breath, a little startled to register just how cold the room had gotten. In a bout of paranoia, he whipped around, sharp eyes searching the entire room.

No one was there. Of course no one was there.

"Jarvis, check the thermostat and lock-up for the night," he said quietly, absently trailing a hand over his shirt-covered Arc Reactor.

"Of course, Sir."

He considered sitting down for a celebratory drink with himself, though what he would celebrate he wasn't sure, but that didn't matter because surely he'd think of an excuse by the bottom of the bottle. He was about to make his way toward the bar, when that chill pricked at his skin once more, and he settled with an uneasy sigh.

Perhaps there was some circuitry that needed fixing in the morning. With the technology-challenged Thor and Steve having lived there recently, there was sure to be some broken bits and pieces they'd been too nervous to tell him about.

He never could figure out why – nothing in this tower was so priceless that he couldn't afford to replace it, his life and the entire building aside, and he was more than happy to waste his money on a few spare microwaves and surround sound systems. Money had never been an issue with him.

Just time.

He'd spent so much of it having fun and making the most of his life, that by the time he realized that he'd had no one to make the most of it with, he was certain it was too late.

_Who wanted the heart of a washed up, womanising, greedy billionaire anyway?_

He was so frightened of the answer that he never bothered to look.

Decision made, he accepted that he was in need of warmth more than he was in the need of a drink, and ambled his way to the closest bathroom, hand lingering over the knob in consideration. After a moment's pause, he clicked the lock, and turned toward the shower, telling himself it was because one never knew the lengths Fury would go to in order to reach him in an emergency.

Not that a measly lock would do anything, but he pointedly didn't think about that.

He was already under the thick spray of the shower before he'd registered going through the mechanics of undressing, and glanced down at his own chest, watching the water beading on the glass of the Arc. It glittered, blue light bubbled inside, like tiny, bright gems.

"Jarvis, lights," he mumbled, and the room was drenched in darkness for all of but a few seconds. Eyes registering the glow finally, the objects within the large shower cubical began to take shape. The tiles on the wall reformed in his vision, the steel of the water adjustments lit up with a silvery blue sheen, and the mist of the water caught the light in faint silvery strokes as it fell from the showerhead and bounced off his skin.

Hands on the cold wall, Tony leaned forward, so it wasn't his head so much under the hot water, but his spine. A pleasant shiver trembled over his skin, and he watched as it drizzled down his collarbone and over his chest.

An opportunist at heart, he decided to milk the peace for all it was worth, conjuring up thoughts of pale skin and slender limbs, milling through the groin-clenching memories if beautiful bodies and the familiar warmth inside them. Tony's hand had already left the wall, contact replaced by his brow as he leaned forward to catch himself, those fingers now sliding over his own stomach for the simple sensation of it.

Circling a hand around himself, he gave in to the same raw pleasures that had so discreetly ruined him.

He'd hardly even started before the tingling sensation of being watched rolled over his shoulders with the stream. It irked him, but he quickly took his mind off it, pressing his cheek to the tiled wall now, seeking out the cool feeling. He braced himself with his forearm, lifting his face barely enough to run his mouth over his damp hand.

He'd been prepared to mute himself before he remembered. _Oh, that's right. Alone._

Elbow nestled into his side, twisting his fist in a way that made himself jerk and his knees almost give out, he allowed himself the whining moan that spilled from his lips, and gave in to the urge to lower himself to his knees. The water was a degree cooler when it hit his shoulders, spilling over his skin and through his hair, leading his eyes to shut tightly.

The heated tingle at the base of his neck never once left, but Tony payed no mind to it, focussing instead on the similar sensation curling low in his abdomen, warm and coiling.

There was a cool bloom over his neck, as though the water had lost temperature, but the almost scalding spray returned hotter than before. His muscles clenched, movements growling loose and uncontrolled, the pleasure sneaking up on him as his mind flickered through his memories, drifting, no longer thinking about what he was doing. His wrist had grown tired when he felt the edge nearing.

That cold touch returned but this time it was firmer, like fingers trailing down the side of his neck, and in shock Tony's eyes snapped open, not even fully absorbing the glow before he'd rocked back, looking over his shoulder. The feeling of ice still burned the skin of his throat.

The weighty feeling of being watched had yet to subside.

.:.

* * *

"_Be a darl and fix this for me_," Tony muttered, voice risen in pitch out of mockery, before he continued to grumble in his own, deeper tone. "I don't know why I bother," he spat, slipping into his rotating chair with a boneless slump, hand over his face.

He'd ballsed up again, this time twice in as many minutes. Not his personal record for minor screw-ups, but still pretty bad.

He parted his fingers, glaring at the manilla folder he'd dumped on his desk, the corner of an image poking out of it, just enough to see the pointed horn of Loki's helmet. He wanted to build a file on the Norse God, hoping to start keeping records of their fights to help them locate the weaknesses that were being exploited.

He'd started it last night after their latest toussel, the one that had landed Natasha with a concussion and Tony himself with a bandaged wrist, having had it clamped in the God's powerful fist as he squeezed, breaking the suit's metal inward. It was only a sprain, but he could feel the power in that grip, seen the look in those eyes, and he knew he'd gotten off luckier than he'd ever thought – Loki made it perfectly clear that he could have ripped Tony's arm off at a whim.

Those eyes had been on his mind all evening, and apparently the whole morning and well into the day, too, because when Pepper had dumped him with a load of paperwork, he'd signed something he wasn't supposed to, and carelessly admitted it to the woman. That was the second mistake.

She'd started off on something about fixing his own problems for once and finally stormed out, contradictingly with the paperwork, and left Tony to his thoughts, still replaying the shrieked words in his mind.

Slipping his hand from his face, resting it over the Arc, he thought on her words carefully. _She doesn't even know how right she is...she's the person in the world who knows be best, yet she has no idea..._

He glared at the folder, the corner of the picture, and whipped out a hand, knocking it off his desk. He replaced the space with his own folded arms, burrying his head in them, closing his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at the now half-exposed picture of the God that lay on the floor, several white sheets and a torn, lined piece of paper littering the space around and under it.

He had a heart, as useless as it was, and it ached.

Becoming a part of the Avengers team was something that had opened his eyes. They were real people, plus a hulk and a god, and they'd each earned his respect and his hand offered in friendship. They'd risk their lives for one another, and would go to any lengths, both within and outside the bounds of SHIELD, to save one another.

Yet none of them could see just how it was that Tony needed saving.

His intelligence was something that was highly valuable to them, and it prided him to know that if he lost his arms and legs in battle, he wouldn't be rendered useless to the cause, but his relationship with his teammates had both filled a hole he hadn't known he'd had, and revealed another.

Being a bachelor was a lonely lifestyle, and he was tired of it. He'd never had sex with someone whom he truly loved, and now, he may have lost the chance to ever love at all.

Opening his eyes, he stared apathetically down at the image of the God, their enemy. _Loki could kill me tomorrow, and I'd never have held the hand of my soulmate, never felt true passion for anyone._

_The only passion you've felt is for your own life._

Tony blinked quickly, before sitting up and glancing cautiously around the room in his workshop. It was the same as always, littered with wired, metal gadgets and half-made projects. The crushed arm of his suit lay on the end of the bench, and the large projection monitor still danced with light in the air, displaying the last thing he'd opened before Pepper had come in – some readings he'd taken of Thor's and Loki's magic during battle, comparing the peaks.

The ceiling lights were dimmer than when he was working, keeping his eyes from straining under the brightness, but there were no dark areas of shadow. The glass front to his workshop was still firmly closed, just as Pepper had left it.

"Jarvis, was anyone in here?" he asked quietly, and the robotic voice whirred strangely without reply. "Jarvis?"

He was facing the computer monitor in front of him, black from having gone on hibernate without attention, and stared through the glass in confusion, focussing on the static sound that came from the muttering, unresponsive Jarvis.

There was movement in the faint reflection of the monitor, and he stared dumbly for a moment at the silhouetted figure he could barely see on the screen, with no more than bored interest. Then it occurred to him that there was someone in here with him afterall. Rather than turning around, he froze.

_They'd broken through my security, and are somehow invisible?_ His mind flickered to the picture on the floor, and immediately he thought of Loki.

There was cold breath on the nape of his neck, the brush of something coming in contact, and Tony stared longingly for all of a second at the crushed arm of his suit, before whipping around in his chair, using a bare arm as a bat and swinging it out into the air. The fine hairs on his arm prickled at the cold spot as his hand sailed through it, but he could only stare in bereft at the negative space behind him.

_Nobody's here..._

Jarvis came back online finally, a proclomation of confusion. "I'm sorry, Sir, I have no knowledge of what time has occurred."

His Arc was thrumming in his chest, his heart racing behind it, pulse leaping in his throat. Without his suit, he felt positively naked and he knew this, but this was an all knew fear that was giving him a feeling he'd be on edge for a while.

One last wary glance around, he gave a nervous laugh, standing up from his chair. Feeding a hand through his hair, the other grabbed the back of the chair and spun it around, absently tucking it under his desk, uncaring of the wheel that rolled over the spilled file on the floor.

His eyes drifted to the many wires that lay, both hooked up to things and not, and he shook his head. "Fear cage," he muttered, putting it down to the electromagnetic impulse in the room affecting his brain finally, "I'm going fucking crazy."

With that thought, Tony decided it was time to put away his toys and call it a night, even if he was going to bed at least five hours earlier than usual. He didn't manage to sleep for at least two hours, staring at the ceiling and thinking on the impossibility that someone had been in there with him.

.:.

* * *

It was a week later before Tony Stark relented that he may not be crazy at all, but in that time he'd spent countless hours drunk, wailing about his oncomming insanity, and calling up Pepper to try and have her find him a psychiatrist. When he'd sobered, he'd reluctantly admitted to himself that he wasn't all that concerned about his psyche, but rather he'd been hoping that others may be.

He was still to proud to admit his dramatic bender had been a cry for attention, but he knew it was true.

It was quite disappointing to have people you thought cared about you tell you over and over "you're just drunk, Stark", "you were already half crazy, man", "you simply need rest, man of iron", and his personal favourite from Pepper "cut the bullshit, Anthony."

What if he really was going insane? What if he belonged in the nut-house?

He'd sobered up, of course, for the best part of two whole days, and was ignoring his teammates in the hopes of provoking some kind of guilty reaction from them. He'd been grumbling to himself all morning about the feeling of eyes on him that had woken him from his sleep that night, telling himself that he hoped they felt really fucking proud of themselves when he ended up in a ward, strapped to a bed and sobbing about how he could fly. It was then, of all times, right in the middle of his irrational soliloquy, when they got the call.

By the end of the night, he wasn't so sure about his crumbling mind anymore.

Tony broadcasted the call on the loudspeakers, and at the sound of his voice Fury had been instantly fired up, making a snide comment about Stark finally being over his snivelling. He went on to explain the situation, not trying very hard to bury his frustration at the Norse God of Mischief that had been tearing up a storm downtown.

Apparently Loki had played a very simple trick, and had turned the waterfountain in one of the public squares to blood, or at least made it look like blood. The outcome was somewhat frightening, that such a small biblical symbol could spark such rioting in a matter of minutes.

A young ethnic couple had been half beaten to death by the time SHIELD were involved, an agent on his day off instantly recognising Loki in the lingering crowd.

Tony had muttered about how it took so long to get this information to them, but Fury talked over him.

And now, with a hand around the throat of his suit, holding him far enough off the ground to be eye-level with the God, he could see the look in those eyes as they traced his face through his mask, a smirk in those fine features that, if he already couldn't breathe, he would have found it impossible to.

"Always trying to prove yourself," Loki had said in that proud, deep voice of his, and Tony wished he hadn't taken off in his suit without the others. They were all too far away to help him in that moment, and knowing them they'd either arive just in time or just a second too slow.

Tony was a little shocked to find his feet on the ground, Loki having lowered him. The God's grip on the throat of his suit didn't tighten, however, but the weight off that area allowed for oxygen to reach his lungs again, and he winced at the thought of trying to get the suit off with the neck crushed in. Taking the arm off last time had been painful and time-consuming.

"Remove your mask and show me your face, Anthony Stark."

When a command comes from a God that has a hold of your throat, you tend to comply. The shield over his face disappeared, and just as before, Loki's eyes were following every line of his expression, this time really seeing them. The God's other hand rose to his exposed face, and Tony's eyes followed it, the fluttering of nerves that had risen in his gut since setting his sights on Loki now hammering at the internal walls of his stomach, like butterflies panicked and coated in dread.

"So is this the man behind the mask," Loki asked, watching in fascination as his own hand came to press restrictedly to the man's cheek, "or is this but another mask, with another man hiding beneath?"

He wasn't sure if the cold he felt consume him was a direct result of the icy touch, or the penetrating words. He stared, wide-eyed at the god, who returned the look. He'd never admit the unworthiness he felt at their proximity, this immortal being seeing right through him.

When Loki jerked him closer, a gasp of surprise left him, the God's cold cheek pressed to his own, lips whispering to his ear still obscured by the frame of his suit. "I_ see_ you, Anthony."

The deadly spark of curiosity, fear, and bloodrush that ignited in his chest at those breathy words, the use of his full name for something other than being admonished giving life to a new sensation, was short lived.

The crash that shook the ground beneath them was violent, concrete crackling at his boots, and a wave of powerful wind knocking into his back, Loki's grip keeping him steady. "Brother!" Thor's voice echoed in Tony's head, "release the Man of Iron at once!"

Loki's eyes met inquisitively with Tony's, expression carefully blank at the other God's arrival, until that smirk leeched back onto his thin lips. He found himself thrown back several metres, crashing by Thor's feet, limp over the edge of the small crater the golden-haired God had made upon his arrival. The damage to his suit held his neck to a strange angle, and he barely had the time to lift his hand and close the mask before he landed face-down.

With Thor's attention now on his foolish, fallen teammate, who was paralyzed within the trap that was his disfunctional suit, Loki took his leave. Tony watched through the visor, calculations and readings shooting over the screen in front of his eyes, fritzing a little to one side.

"Well," the Trickster began, giving an almost polite bow, a hand curled by his stomach, other hand held outwards. The scepter flew into his grasp from where he'd dropped it upon capturing Tony. "I see my business here has concluded. Farewell."

And with that, a faint dark green mist appeared in place of Loki Laufeyson, their enemy escaping to fight them another day.

.:.

* * *

**A/N: **I decided to try my hand at FrostIron. This was a brief project, and I expect to have it finished quickly. I hope you all enjoy it, nonetheless. There are some brilliant authors and vidders in this category that inspired me to write my own piece. I hope they aren't too out of character, though if some of the popular FrostIron fictions I've read are any indication, that won't particularly matter.

**Love, MK**

_Wheel Of Fortune: Symbolises twists of faith and life's unexpected changes. _


	2. I: Moon

**Card Of Fools**

**II**  
_Moon_

.:.  
'

Tony held an icepack, tossing it from one hand to another as the cold began to burn his skin, waiting irritably for Bruce to finish looking over his throat. "Whatever you got that's making you so lucky, you should be sharing," the man said, and Tony could hear the warning behind the light words that followed. "He could have killed you...again."

"Rub it in a little harder, yeah?" he replied sarcastically. Banner just sighed and prodded carefully once more at his adam's apple.

Natasha was standing there, arms folded, staring him down, and he lowered his gaze to the pink skin of his palms, suffering under the ice. There was a question in her gaze, parallel to the one in everyone's minds – just why the hell wasn't he dead?

"The bruising around your throat is deep, so everything is going to be painful for a while," Banner warned him, stepping back. Tony rolled his eyes and slapped the ice to his throat, before wincing and lowering it a little, gingerly pressing it to the least sensitive place.

"Copy that," he muttered, sighing at the sight of his precious suit, crushed once more. "What the hell is the point of making an indestructible suit if it needs repairing every time I take it outside?"

Nobody answered him, and he knew they were all still sore at him for taking off without them. Just as well, since he was still sore at them for ignoring his fears of going guano. It was all painfully childish, but he couldn't bring himself to care, not when his throat was throbbing like this.

Thor had been visibly contemplating something the whole time, and finally seemed to come up with the appropriate words to address the problem. "Why was your mask off?"

Tony raised a brow at that, silently annoyed that he was being made to talk. Banner wasn't kidding when he said everything would hurt. "Well, it's not like he doesn't already know who I am..."

"That's not what I meant," Thor gave him a meaningful look, "why did you show your face to my brother during battle? Your suit is the only thing that protects you."

"Well, he asked so nicely, who was I to refuse?"

"Why are you not taking my words seriously?" Thor frowned at him. Tony wanted to retort with something stupid so badly that he actually bit the tip of his tongue to keep silent. The God was staring at him with big blue eyes that were so innocent with concern and confusion that it actually made him feel guilty to be so sarcastic.

With a sigh, he palmed his face, trying to refrain from thinking on Loki's gentle touch to that same cheek not an hour earlier. "If you're mortal, and your up against a God, you tend to get a little desperate when he has the upper hand," he pointed out, hoping to make Thor understand, "so he asked me to show my face, and I did."

Thor's frown hadn't eased the slightest. "Why?"

"I don't know, do I look like I speak psycho-immortal-super-villain? Besides, you arrived right then," he said, both lying and not.

"He looked as though he meant you no harm..."

"He had me by my throat," he pointed out, raising his eyebrows. "That's pretty damn threatening. Have you seen my suit?" he asked, pulling away the ice and showing off the large patch of darkening skin, that was still mostly red but already quickly turning a mess of blues, greens, and purples.

Thor held up his hands, "I read your point, friend," he assured, "I am simply puzzled over his chance to eradicate you."

So, they were concerned about_ that,_ but not what he himself was concerned about?

The God's attempts to reassure him only stung more. He didn't look at them, a forced smile twitching only briefly over his mouth, and he stood. "Well, I always knew my devilish charm was good for something."

The others watched, silenced, as he left the room, unsure what was said that had offended him. They mutually retired to their familiar rooms within the tower, unaware it only broke his heart more when none came to see him to ask what was troubling him.

.:.

* * *

Tony liked the view from his tower, particularly the open-aired balcony that curved around a small portion of it, but he never really noticed how little time he spent there between taking off and landing again. Upon this waking revelation, that was where he found himself, still in his silver satin pyjama pants, teeth feeling fuzzy and unbrushed, and only one mug of coffee in his system. He'd stretched out a deck-chair in the space, a glass tablet the size of a placemat in his hands, a flashy looking document up on the screen.

He could hear the others moving about inside, talking, bickering, eating. He didn't like testing his friends, but it was bringing him results he both expected and detested.

Never had he thought he'd be in this situation, where all he wanted was a companion. A true, heartfelt connection with someone, who could reach him emotionally as well as intellectually.

It was too late for any of that. He'd probably be dead by the end of the month if his occasions with one Loki Laufeyson was any indication.

He decided to sit outside all day and see what it would take to bring them outside to talk to him. He hoped that it would be something to clear his pains, to grant him that comfort that true friends held. He expected to be disappointed.

_At least, this way, they'll meet my expectations somewhere._

"Stark," it was Clint this time, barely even bothering to open the door, simply poking his head out of it. He took a look at the tablet in Tony's hands, clearly noting that the other man was occupied, before looking up to meet his eyes. "Someone broke the television, but we're not sure who. I think Thor threw the remote at it."

So his day had finally started, it seemed.

The grunt of effort he gave as he pulled himself up from the reclined seat was lost on Clint's ears, the archer having already disappeared within the house, sounds of bickering leaking outside. Minimizing the information on the tablet, he placed it back on his seat and cracked his fingers, schooling his expression into a mask of boredom, heading inside, determined not to let them know.

Just as he passed through the doorway that had been left open, Loki's words occurred to him.

_'So is this the man behind the mask? Or is this but another mask, with another man beneath?'_

_Well, shit._

.:.

* * *

"Where did you derive your name?"

It was an innocent question, but the voice it was carried on lead Tony to drop the wrench, hissing when it landed on his foot. He'd have a black nail for sure. He bent down to pick it back up again, catching the shape of the intruder from the corner of his eye, lifting the heavy hand-tool and pegging it toward the being.

Tony was still crouched on the floor, one knee and hand pressed to the cool marble, the other knee raised to his chest, with the other hand still hovering in the air from the throw. He could only stare in shocked confusion at the empty space, where he'd been so sure the voice had come from, watching with a flinch as the wrench hit one of his offline bots, scraping across the floor as it fell.

There was a flicker of electricity in the air, and a brush of movement seemed to fall over Tony's spine. He stood, turning around and backing away several steps, staring owlishly in fear at the God who was sitting on his desk, inspecting a gadget nestled in his palm with interest, completely unbothered about the attempted violence.

He didn't even look up at Tony, turning the object over curiously. It wasn't anything in particular, just a metal wand that had been welded with a copper coil, a small square inset on one end, prepared for a microchip. It was a simple starting point for a project, and he wasn't about to risk his life by asking Loki to put it down.

He was making a device to combat some of the electromagnetic waves in his workshop, reconvinced that he was indeed going crazy when he no longer felt the eyes on him but would occasionally walk through unexplainable cold spots. He'd planned to make several more coiled wands, but had grown side-tracked with the reparations of one of his suit pieces that had been lying around his workshop, a careless Thor having happened to spill his drink over it...somehow. By the gods, Tony had yet to figure_ that_ one out.

The Thunder God was truly hopeless, and how he'd managed to survive several millennia was beyond Tony.

Loki continued to speak, completely unconcerned with the miniature anxiety-attack he was causing the unarmed Avenger. "You are no man of iron. You are a man of flesh and bone, Stark. I am curious, what governed you to coin such a name for yourself?"

_Respond, you idiot,_ he snapped at himself when he only continued to unattractively gape like a fish. He cleared his throat, just to assert himself he still had control of it. _I haven't had nearly enough to drink if I'm gonna deal with this tonight._

"Well, _Loki..._ if I may call you that," he hurried politely when those emerald eyes flitted to him quickly, "you finally decided to take me up on that drink?"

The god blinked at him silently, before placing the metal wand back on the desk, the coil keeping it from rolling off, leaning back on his hands. He simply observed the man, looking quite harmless. _Trickster,_ Tony reminded himself,_ God of Mischief, Liesmith, immortal foe, dangerous enemy, bad for my health._

"I suppose I'll postpone it for yet another time," Loki replied slowly, looking Tony over. "I merely came to have my question answered." Tony had hoped to shift the conversation into more casual grounds, so he wouldn't be worried he'd answer wrong and end up cursed. His attempt was obviously unsuccessful.

Tony blinked, and was shocked to see Loki had disappeared, a frown instantly creasing his brow, teeth grit in worry. There wasn't even a mist or smoke left behind, Loki was simply gone, vanishing in the amount of time it took for his eyes to close and open again.

_How the hell do you lose a God?_ he chided himself, _never turn a blind eye on your enemy._

He was about to call out to Jarvis, noting that the room was indeed quite cold, when he saw a hand come over his shoulder from the corner of his eye. Tony was paralysed as it gripped his chin gently, forcing his head to the side. All his words had abandoned him, and out of fear, he automatically complied to the insistent gesture, allowing Loki to tilt his head closer to a shoulder. On the other side, by the exposed stretch of his neck, Loki's nose brushed by his thundering pulse, bumping his bruise at the same time.

He felt the God breathing him in, holding his own breath as the enemy nosed at his pained skin, a firm and surprisingly broad chest pressed against his back.

"There is no more iron in your blood than the average man's. You do not adorn yourself in it. Your suit isn't even made from it. You present none of its properties, nor hold any of its qualities." Another hand creeped along his side, landing on the gleaming circle over his heart, tracing the glow through Tony's shirt. "Do you keep it here, with the rest of your secrets, _Man of Iron_?"

"Ironman is just a term," he breathed, calming his voice and forcing it to remain smooth and impassive. "It's a symbol of strength."

"But strength is not your own personal virtue, is it?"

Tony wet his lips, finding it impossible to keep his mind off the conflictively threatening and yet peaceful touch of the _feely_ God. With his enemy at his back, and no weapons in sight, no way of calling for help without condemning himself, he could only stand still and accept the passive taunting. Welcoming his fate was the best idea right now.

Loki had him right where he wanted him.

"Not physically, no..." it sounded weak, and Loki chuckled into the corner of his jaw.

"I don't break my toys, Stark, do not fear me so. You're no fun without your suit. You're no challenge without it, _Ironman_."

Without a doubt, he was going to die. Tony just knew it. There was no way the God of Deceit would be telling him something of truth. The fact Loki was denying the desire to kill him only affirmed the idea that it was indeed his plan. Resigned rather than relaxed, he allowed the stiffness of his shoulders to abate.

He'd been correct in thinking he'd never live to see the day when someone unconditionally loved him, and he loved them in return.

_Someone said to look at your life every morning and consider, if you died today would you be proud of what you had done?_

All the money and the fame and even the lives he'd saved later, Tony Stark was standing there, at the precipice of death, and decided at once that he wasn't proud. He should have done much, much more. He should have made more of himself as a person, rather than building on an icon.

"Do me a favor and try to avoid getting blood on the hardware," he mumbled, closing his eyes. The hand on his chin tightened, and Loki's face was no longer near his own. When the God's voice sounded, Loki was far enough behind him to have taken a step back, chest no longer pressed to the mortal.

"I am not here to kill you, Anthony."

Those fingers released his chin. Eyes snapped open, he quickly staggered away, set on slamming his hand down on an unmarked key in the corner of his keyboard. It was the alarm, and if he could just get to it, then he'd maybe be safe.

He forgot Loki could teleport, or at least move really fucking quickly over a small space, because he ran heavily into the solid form that was the God, who once more grabbed him, but this time by his shoulders. He could no longer see the alarm key, obscured by the imposing body of the Trickster, and that small flicker of hope died pathetically in the pit of his stomach.

"Believe me when I say this," Loki whispered, bringing Tony's face up from his chest, "I mean no harm this night."

Tony's eyes were wider than he was sure they'd ever been, giving away the look of a man who wasn't ready to die, one who still had things he wanted to do. Things that weren't related to saving the world. His chest was pleading painfully against his dread to survive, that there were personal things he needed to come to terms with.

Loki must have seen this, he was certain.

The God held him at arm's length now. "I believe you answered my question. Goodnight, Anthony Stark."

This time, Tony knew that Loki was no longer in the room, because the chilling cold that had filled his workshop was melting away, leaving it warm again, stiflingly so. It wouldn't strike him until the morning that somehow the Norse God had slipped his security, and that he'd have to reprogram some things immediately.

At that moment, he rubbed a hand over his chin, as though expecting to still find fingers there. He stared about the room, taking in the wrench he'd thrown, and the wand on his bench that Loki had moved, all with a critical eye.

He'd missed something, he was sure of it.

When it hit him, he was about to sit back down as though nothing had happened, and threw himself backwards in shock, staring over at the lonesome wrench once more. _Loki just had me alone, and about the only thing he tried to do with me was have a conversation._

Just as quickly as he'd thrown himself away from the desk, he was back at it, determined to find the security footage, even more convinced than before that he was losing it.

"Christ," he muttered, seeing on the monitor that Loki had indeed been there, and had made no truly aggressive moves, but rather.._.seductive_?

His groin gave an interested twinge at the suggestive position Loki held him in, the way the god was nuzzling into his neck, and he glared down at the front of his pants, betrayed. When his body seemed determined to ignore him and stayed interested, he gave a flustered groan, switching off the computer abruptly and tossing his keyboard away from him to avoid temptation. He_ hated_ his body.

"Yeah, I'm definitely not drunk enough for this shit."

.:.

* * *

Tony saw red, literally. There was blood on the bag, and he had to pull his last punch short, staggering back and lifting his knuckles up into his line of sight. Behind him, Thor was munching steadily on something mexican and completely unhealthy for all fitness-related intents and purposes.

"You'll burn yourself out," Clint warned, dabbing at his face with a towel. Tony ignored the archer, licking the blood off the back of his knuckles and taking up his stance again, taking a deep breath before throwing a powerful kick into the bag. It'd been years since he'd done boxing properly, and the attack threw him off balance, but he quickly reformed and repeated the move.

Steve was draped over the ropes of the boxing ring, watching with keen eyes from inside as Tony hammered into the bag of rags and sand, wearing himself out. Thor was licking his fingers now, moving over to stand beside the ring by Steve's legs, arms folded and watching Stark lose himself. There was a bulge in one cheek, still chewing as he spoke.

"What do you think is troubling him?" Thor asked. Tony slowed his kicks, trying to hear, but refusing to break focus.

"Who _ever_ knows what's going on in his head?" Steve asked back, and they fell silent, probably in agreement.

_Nobody ever bothers to just ask,_ Tony thought, glaring at the bag as though it had done him a great injustice, giving up on the kicks and throwing his hardest punch possible into the indented fabric. He felt the skin on his knuckles tear further, and fell with the force of his own sloppy swing, slumping to his knees on the matting beside it. The bag swung around, barely missing his shoulder, and continued to rock as he sat there, just out of its reach.

His fists curled on the matting, and he absolutely refused to look up. Loki had been right about yet another thing. His strength lied in his science, just as it had with Bruce. But, unlike Banner, take away his science, and what was he left with?

He was left with nothing, and his team was left with a big liability on the field. He'd always have a place with them, of course, but the truth of the fact was that he was stuck in this position that if something happened to his suit, he was useful for bait and that was all.

Everyone, every last person on this team, was able to kick his ass with their bare hands if he was to go against them in a brawl. Now that all the peacocking was aside, perhaps Steve had a point.

He'd been so helpless last night, when Loki had him cornered.

He didn't know what he thought he'd achieve by coming here to the gym and hammering the punching bag for all his worth, with nothing but his own reflection in his sights as he pummeled away at the helpless sack. All he knew was that the fog had cleared, and the comfort of his rational thinking had returned.

It didn't matter how strong he became, Loki was a God, and he was stuck between a rock and a hard place there.

It didn't matter if he trained until he was able to put Clint in a headlock and hold him there, he'd still never match up to Steve, Bruce, or Thor. Possibly even Natasha.

About all his lapse in level-headedness had done was give him an outlet to vent his frustrations and flush the smoke from his crowded skull.

The shuddering of exhaustion had eased, and the throbbing of his knuckles and the wince of his ankle made it perfectly clear that the adreniline had run its full course. Now he'd have to slink off and nurse his wounds, no doubt while the others mocked him while he wasn't listening. He knew they'd do it, too. It wasn't often they saw him do anything physically strenuous, and he wasn't exactly twenty-five anymore, so seeing him lose himself only to end up with injuries because of his carelessness, it would no doubt be amusing to them.

"Stark, what are you doing?" Steve asked, and he actually sounded a little concerned. _So he should,_ Tony thought bitterly, _his teammate just had a miniature meltdown. About time one of them said something._

"I'm sitting," he replied shortly, pulling himself to his feet again, skillfully hiding the ache of his ankle. He must have kicked wrong. "Now, I'm standing."

"No, seriously, what are you doing?"

When Tony turned to give him a look, hoping it would be dark enough for the Captain to back off, he saw the absence of understanding loose on those features, arms hanging limply over the red ropes, with Clint and Thor stood either side of him on the ground, like a god damned audience. They all shared similar expressions, obviously expecting some kind of forthcomming explanation.

"Releasing tension," he replied simply, turning on the ball of his good foot and scooping up his jacket from where he'd tossed it over the rack of barbells.

He heard a scoff come from Clint. "What tension?" the archer asked cockily, "and don't you usually release it...other ways?"

Tony froze at the implication, but he wasn't sure which one. On one hand, it stung to think his teammates didn't consider him as having issues that affected him. On the other, it was strangely offensive that they thought so of him, whether or not it was true.

He turned, a false smile curving his lips and visibly not reaching his eyes. He knew they saw the lie in his expression. "Well, next time I'm a little stressed, I'll just give you a call, birdy."

He didn't wait to see if they'd really picked up on the fake cheer, rushing out of the gym as fast as his protesting ankle would allow.

.:.

* * *

**A/N:** Wow, I was very happy with the response the first chapter received! I'm kinda glad I spent most of my day working on this, because I love having several chapters lined up for posting. Thankyou to the people who reviewed the first chapter, you forced me to steamroll onwards with editing this one. I get easily distracted, see, and while writing fanfiction is a distraction from my homework and assignments, everything else (*cough*reading*cough) is a distraction from writing.  
Enjoy!

**Love, MK.**

_Moon: Brings in contact with our subconscious, instincts, and hidden fears. Indication of mystery, secrets, or a time of confusion. Nothing is as it seems._


	3. I: Devil

**Card Of Fools**

**III**  
_Devil_

.:.  
'

Tony was half the way to convincing himself that Loki had simply been a bad dream, and that he'd never encounter him under odd circumstances again. He was staring in the mirror one following morning, glaring at the tired bags under his eyes, when his mind subconsciously went to the God, and how he'd been lacking sleep because he'd been tossing and turning over this.

"Damn Loki, he's bad for my complexion," he muttered, inspecting the naturally dark skin under a tired eye.

He honestly wasn't expecting to ever see the Trickster again, lest it be on the battle field and he was getting thrown around some more and having his suit all dented and bent out of shape. He told himself he was fine with that as he lowered his head to rinse his face with warm water. Swiping it out of his eyes, he returned his blurred gaze to his reflection.

He definitely hadn't expected to see anyone, let alone Loki, stood behind him. It happened, however, and he was left to collapse into the basin, gripping it literally for dear life, white knuckles and all.

Loki tilted his head in acknowledgement, lacking all malicious expression. "Goodmorning, Stark."

Tony, petrified, didn't return the sentiment. He remained statue-esque, too fearful to turn around, convinced that it was only real if he did so.

An entertained smile appeared on the God's lips, and he wondered just how screwed he was now.

"You don't appear to have slept well," Loki teased, "bad dreams?"

"If they were about you, then probably," Tony retorted, cursing his damned almost bitchy replies. It's like his mouth was programmed to run on auto-pilot.

"But not necessarily?" Loki asked innocently, and the colour started to drain from Tony's face. "Hm, I wonder, what kind of dreams would you have about me that weren't sinister."

"Time for twenty questions again?" was the smart reply from the man who couldn't help but think he wasn't all that smart at the moment. Loki looked puzzled at his reference, the same way Steve or Thor would appear puzzled, and Tony wasn't surprised when the God didn't respond to the quip. It was a little soothing, actually, the familiar reaction. He didn't fail to notice the way his own grip on the basin lost that edge of desperation.

Sensing the mortal wasn't going to move with Loki still so close, the immortal relented and stood back a few paces.

"I apologise, I am curious in nature," the God said nonchalantly, inspecting his nails as though this were just an everyday situation. "You intrigue me, so naturally I wonder about you. Ironman, who fights for truth yet lies with every breath."

"How so?" Tony muttered, realizing he was in nothing but a towel and there was a God of Mischief in his bathroom, and now really wasn't the time to cower. Now was the time to assert himself...carefully.

"You wear not one but two masks," Loki said, still casually, finding something unsavory about his thumbnail and scratching at it. It seemed he wasn't looking up in order to make the mortal feel more at ease. "You've simply forgotton how to remove the other."

"Says the God with no identity," Tony spat back, feeling a flare of indignance at the accusation. Loki's eyes snapped up at him, sickly green fire licking along the edges of his iris, and Tony could almost read within that narrow-eyed glare the desire to sew the mortal's mouth shut. A part of him wished Loki would actually do so and save him from digging his hole any deeper.

"I have offended you," Loki said suddenly, his voice like a whip against the wall of ice that had begun to form around them. He didn't sound remorseful in the slightest, but rather quite curious. "Is it because I, of all beings, could see it? Or is it because you yourself wont care to admit that nobody really knows you at all?"

Tony finally turned, tearing his eyes off the reflection of the God just long enough to set his sights on the real thing behind him, propped against the wall. "Maybe I'm just offended by your presence, ever think of that?"

_Sometimes I wonder if I have any self control whatsoever..._

Half of Loki's mouth curved into a smirk. "Yes, I considered, but the idea was unsupported."

Tony decided to continue covering his terror at being stuck in his bathroom alone with the enemy by giving in and simply allowing his mouth to act without his consent. It was better than clinging helplessly to the basin and staring dumbly at the reflective glass. His masculinity was at about as much risk as his pride right about now.

"Why are you here, Loki."

"Sheer curiosity?" the God answered back as though the words were a question, pushing off the wall and letting his hands fall to his sides, mirth flitting around in those emerald eyes as he approached.

"Of what."

Having answers demanded of him thankfully didn't anger the immortal, only amuse him, and Tony could work with that. If he was pissing Loki off, that would be a different story, but he wasn't. Loki was getting awfully close, however, and unwillingly his mind went back to the way he'd reacted to watching the video of their last encounter.

_I swear,_ he threatened himself, feeling the flush starting up his only faintly bruised neck, _if you react, you cheap bastard, I will cut you off with nail clippers._

It was kind of hard to make his body listen to him, however, when Loki reached out and took the edge of Tony's towel in his hand, tugging just hard enough for the mortal to fall forward, an inch of space between their torsos. Tony choked on a small, miserable sound, laughter rising in the God's eyes. He leaned in, turning his face into Tony's throat, breath fanning soothingly over the marked skin.

Tony wanted nothing more than to push Loki away, but the simple submission of being so close to such power, and with nothing to aid him should things turn ugly, rendered him incapable of any action.

"Your body, it acts on its own?" Loki questioned, breathing in deeply by his ear. A stone had lodged itself in Tony's throat, and he just couldn't say anything to that. "I _feel_ your desire, _Anthony_."

Tony decided he'd lived under a rock for too long, because his deprived body was commiting the worst betrayal yet. That mouth closed over the skin behind his ear, just a second's worth of intimate contact, before the God was retreating, a snicker on his lips.

"You have no disciplin," Loki taunted, the hand that had been holding onto the edge of Tony's towel releasing, dragging loosely over the front of the damp fabric, barely grazing the swelling of Tony's arousal. "And no voice, either, so it seems."

Tony's lips parted, mouth opening to form words in his defence, but nothing tumbled out other than a stuttered exhale, stuck right where he was, with the God of Mischief himself torturing him so cruelly. He tried again, but a slender, cool finger rose to his lips to hush him.

"Shh, Anthony," Loki grinned, "for my sake,_ please_ don't strain yourself." The God leaned in, brushing his lips over the back of his own finger, the faux kiss barely reaching Tony's own lips before Loki pulled away, removing the cool digit as well. Lifting his brow teasingly at the man, who had gone weak and slightly pale, he unexpectedly dismissed himself. "Take care, Stark."

Yet again, the decidedly psychotic, and possibly nymphomanic, Trickster had vanished from sight, effectively ending yet another of their predominantly one-sided conversations. The raised flesh of Tony's arms was the only real reminder that he'd been there at all. His chest hurt, his heart hammering violently and angrily against his ribcage; if it swelled any further, he was worried the shrapnel might find it anyway.

Once he'd allowed the recent confrontation, if he could even call it that, to fully sink in, his body was no longer captured under a spell of silence. Choice words flowed.

"What the fuck was that about?"

.:.

* * *

He'd made a dramatic entrance as always, having turned flashing his own power for simple fun into a passive-aggressive habit of showing off. Loki barely seemed to notice his blast as it came flying toward the two God's locked at a stalemate with their weapons crossed. Tony realised he'd underestimated because it was quite obvious Loki was aware of the attack, seeing as he fell back and nearly managed to direct Thor into the path, the other God falling forward to try and chase his opponent.

The Thunder God thankfully awoke from the trance of his battle and kept out of the line of the blast, glancing back at Tony to affirm that it was friend and not foe, before resuming his fight, lifting Mjolnir high.

Loki, however, was no longer by Thor, and the other Avengers who were stood by watching the battle were glancing around stupidly, trying to spot their escaped enemy.

Tony didn't even need to look to know that Loki was behind him. He turned quick, dodging a blow from the sceptre. "And so we meet again in battle," Loki taunted, watching Tony slide back away from him. In the short distance, Thor's voice thundered.

"Return and fight me, brother!" but neither Tony nor Loki paid any mind to it.

"Just don't break my damn suit again," the man snarked, the funny sound of his amplified voice prompting Loki to tilt his head, "I'm always having to fix the damage you make." Tony lifted his hand in the Trickster's direction, firing up a blast, growling a little when it went straight through the God, dissolving him. He turned his head, and behind him, Loki grinned, excitement brimming in that gaze.

_Damn magic..._

"You challenge me again?" Loki questioned, raising his scepter like a sword. Tony bent his knees, raising his hand in the God's direction once more. "I shall accept."

_This is more like it._

Things could only go back to normal if they were trying to kill each other, after all.

Tony grinned behind the safety of his mask, firing off another blast, vaguely amused when it when through Loki a second time rather than hitting him. Having registered the repeated move and calculated it, alerts scanned over his visor, and he lifted his arm automatically to block, thankful for the motion sensors at the ends of his peripheral vision. The scepter struck against the metal of his suit forearm without denting it, and Tony was suddenly much more interested than he had been a few seconds earlier – Loki was holding back.

"Wanna make a wager?" he asked, throwing the weight of the staff from his arm-guard, reacting just quick enough to grab for it, closing his metal fingers just above Loki's upper hand. He held out his other toward his team, making sure they wouldn't come any closer. He had it this time, he didn't need their help.

Loki didn't try and pull his weapon away, giving Tony an interested look, and for a moment he swore the God could see his enthralled expression behind his mask. There was a subtle tilt of his head as he answered. "I suppose it _would_ make it exciting, wouldn't it?"

Tony released the scepter, taking a step back, preparing to launch himself forward but halting just before he shot toward his opponent. "If I win, you have to have that drink with me, without trying to kill me," he said first, before pushing off his with back foot, firing his booster. Loki moved out of the way with the same arrogant grace he'd always held, blocking the strike from the large, metal fist.

Loki had a gleam in his eyes, a dangerous one, and for a moment he was worried it would be something horrible. "And if I am the victor, you hand over your mask to me."

It was such a simple request that Tony paused, accidentally ignoring the alert and caught completely off guard when the scepter came around to knock the back of his head. His vision span as he soared through the air, scraping along the concrete of the building's roof. He lay there a moment, before deciding Loki's bet was doable, especially in the likely event that he'd lose, and lifted himself up onto his hands.

The motion sensors warned him that Loki had moved and was now behind him, and he used the stabalisers in his hands as boosters, pushing himself off the ground and slamming back into the God's torso. Loki was taken by surprise and, upon righting himself, held out his hand, a spark flying from his fingers, lifting a block of damaged concrete and slamming it into the Ironman's legs.

The other Avengers watched on as Loki and Tony fought, confused as to the strange dance they almost seemed to do around each other, almost as though they were trying to best one another, not kill one another.

Thor knew for a fact that each blow from Loki's scepter should cause at least some amount of damage to Ironman's suit, and that there were many weapons in the mortal's arsenal still unused that Stark could have shot Loki down with, even if only to weaken him.

There was no denying that Loki had grown stronger as his magic had become used to being drawn on within a planet where magic wasn't in the atmosphere. His sorcery was growing more powerful every day he used it.

The battle between their comrade and Thor's brother lasted only until Loki finally took the plunge between the two of them, and brought his scepter down in a particularly brutal stroke, sparks flying, magic being weilded to disarm Tony's weapon. The blow to the sternum of his suit sent Ironman flying back again, hitting the ground hard.

Tony blinked up in shock, readings no longer appearing on his screen, and his suit refused to respond to him. He couldn't even curl a finger. "Oh, hell..." he muttered disappointedly, not feeling particularly bad about his loss, knowing that even if Loki didn't honour their barter and tried and make a finishing blow, his team were close enough to stop him.

Loki's eyes were fierce with energy, and Tony felt his lungs clench at the sight, for once undisrupted by the calculations and scientific data that appeared on the visor over his eyes. Tony felt the suit thrum, a fizzle of static over the screen, and was about to lift onto his elbow and help himself to his feet, but the point of Loki's sceptor stopped him, the Trickster resting it over the glowing powersource in his chest warningly.

For all of a second, Tony thought Loki really was going to attempt that final blow. The God simply grinned secretly down at him, and Tony forgot that this was the enemy that had tried to kill him, and could have killed him, several times over.

"I believe I emerged the champion of our battle," he stated matter-of-factly. He looked quite proud of himself. "I respect your honour, and appreciated the fair fight."

"You appreciated it because you won, right?" Tony retorted, quirking a brow knowingly, and Loki stared at him, still grinning, not denying it. Once again, he was sure the God could see him through the metal over his face.

Seeing their comrade fallen and unmoving, they others started toward them in a run, Hawkeye's arrow chinking off the metal plate of Loki's shoulder armor. Loki glared at the intruders on his game, and removed his scepter from Ironman's chestplate.

"I will return to collect my prize," were the cryptic words that fell from his mouth in parting, before he melted away into the air, dull tendrils of green mist rolling through the air, fading like smoke on the wind.

"Stark!" it was Steve, and before he knew it they'd gathered around him, "speak to me!"

"You have beautiful eyes," Tony replied, hoping they'd hear just how fine he was. The face of his suit retracted, and he stared up at them, in particular Steve's relieved and uncomfortable face. "Anyone ever tell you that?"

"My brother has once again spared you," Thor spoke before anyone else. "What is the reason for his mercy?"

It was said before the others could start fussing over him and the indent now in the sternum of his suit, thankfully just below the Arc Reactor rather than atop it. Unfortunately, that also meant just below his ribs, which would make life difficult for a while, both in getting up and in breathing.

_Getting the suit off this time's gonna be a bitch,_ he thought.

Tony rolled his eyes, lowering the mask once more. "He likes playing hard-to-get, I guess."

With the other's still balked about the fact, Thor was the one who dropped to his knees, "You never take me seriously." The God frowned when he noticed how deep Tony was stuck in the concrete.

"Of course not, 'cause you're just too damn adorable," was the reply, a loud crackle resounding as he tore his arm out of the ground, reaching up and lightly making to pinch Thor's cheeks between metal fingers, only to have his hand guided away by the laughing God.

"Can you stand?" Steve asked, and Tony went to shake his head, before sighing at himself.

"No. I don't have any power in the lower half of my suit," he replied. Thor exchanged a look with the others, then leaned over and grabbed at Ironman's shoulders, pulling hard. As the concrete gave way, Thor pulled himself up so he was only on one knee, taking the man's dislodged hand and helped him the rest of the way. "That wasn't so bad," he said, now upright. He went to take a step and the suit didn't move for the first two tries.

His teammates watched as he finally went back online, firing up his boosters just to be sure and hovering for a few seconds, before landing again. "Well,_ he's_ fine," Banner said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I have to say, I'm actually surprised."

"Fury is going to want an explanation," Natasha reminded, and Tony sighed. This wasn't like the last two times – Loki very clearly had a chance to finish the job and yet he didn't.

"Oh goody," he muttered, not looking forward to this at all. It was easier to lie and make out like everything was fine while hidden behind his suit, but when that was taken away, as it would be, it was harder to keep up the act. Especially around Fury.

_The man may only have one eye, but it's a damn good eye, and he sees absolutely everything with it._

"Alright, better go before he gives himself another ulcer. Don't want him naming it after me."

.:.

* * *

There was something terrifying about anticipating Loki's arrival.

He didn't know if it was because of the God himself, or if it was because he was sitting there in his workshop, completely calm, awaiting said God's appearance. His mind wouldn't settle on anything, and he absolutely could not focus with all these musings about Loki flying around in his head.

Surely such a dishonest God wouldn't spare him for no reason.

After about an entire hour of staring at the spectacular view of his blank wall, and no appearance from the ellusive Trickster, Tony took to swaying left and right on his swivelling office chair, clicking his pen furiously with nerves.

He should have warned the Avengers that Loki would be paying him a visit, they might have been able to capture him, but the information was basically pointless if he didn't even know when. He wasn't even certain that he'd see the Trickster when he came. About all telling them anything would gain him was twenty-four hour surveillance, and a tonne of questions he didn't want to even attempt at answering.

Living with his teammates was like playing trivia and being about as intellectually functional as a vegetable. Most of them were insensitive, some were too blunt, one or two didn't quite understand the meaning of 'I don't know', and all expected to be answered with what they wanted to hear.

So, he'd avoid the truth, feed them a tasty lie here or there, and they'd stay off his back about it. Hopefully.

_Still, Fury'd have kittens if he ever finds out I was keeping this to myself,_ he thought. _I'd have no choice but to tell them that I've spoken to Loki before, and they'd probably throw me in a cell and interrogate me, for aiding the enemy or something just as preposterous. _

He stopped swaying, tossing his pen onto the desk and rubbing a hand over his mouth, lingering over the line of facial hair over his lip. _Shit, what have I done? I'm in such a bind I can't even tell anyone without being accused of something. But what if I don't tell them and they eventually do find out?_ He glared at the wall this time, wondering why he was sitting there, like he had some sort of death wish. _Loki's not sparing me out of the goodness of his heart, he wants something I have. _

He stood with an abrupt movement, head spinning as he decided that it was completely pointless to sit there until Loki came. If anything, Trickster God would be aware of this and probably never turn up just for laughs. Tony moved back upstairs with apprehension, noting how late it had grown during his wait.

It was beyond midnight. The others were surely asleep by now.

Deciding to take a shower, he chose the ensuite bathroom adjoined to his personal room, and stripped off after locking the bedroom door. His feet touched tiles just as he removed the final item, his shirt. He was in the shower, sighing into the warmth, before he knew it.

Thoughts of Loki's strange behaviour touched down, and for once, he did nothing to rid himself of them, thinking on the unlikely attraction he'd begun to develop for the raven immortal. It was without surprise that he realized it hadn't even been Loki's looks that had captured him first.

It had been the way Loki touched him, so differently to how he was used to being touched, and he was aware of just how fragile a creature he was in comparison to the dangerous God that had begun to linger too close. Loki's touches were fleeting, and his insinuations were brief and easy enough to look over, but Tony was Tony, and the promise of intimacy was just too good to look over.

He had his limits, and it usually stopped at men, but Loki wasn't even really a man. He was a _God._

If that didn't stroke his ego, Tony wasn't sure what would.

Loki was probably messing with him, too, which was just the thing that kept him so wary. This was their enemy, and he was betraying everything he thought he believed in when he looked at that perfect, godly face and thought of how his body had reacted to that being's simple contact. He was suspicious of Loki, and shaken more than he'd care to admit whenever he was alone with him, but it didn't seem to matter that he knew the Trickster had to have ulterior motives, Tony couldn't get the dangerous being out of his head.

It had been such subtle seduction, aided by the strange shift in personality Loki seemed to have around him.

So yeah, perhaps Loki's appearance was a reason for why he was so suddenly infatuated, but it was a close second at best, because for once in Tony's life, it was somebody's contact with him that had brought them to his interest, not their face.

Pretty soon after that came the thought that Loki was the only person who seemed to have any idea of who he was. The God wasn't even a friend, he was an enemy, and only spent a handful of moments around him at best that wasn't an attempt at removing one another from existence. It had only taken a few moments for Loki to see what was inside him, which said more than the lifetime of chances others had been given, and it was enough to make Tony regret ever having anything to do with the Avengers, who were sworn against Loki Laufeyson with their lives.

Why did the only person to ever recognise his pains have to be his enemy?

He was still in the shower when Loki came to him.

The temperature in the shower cubical shifted, and the few jets of water that soared over his shoulder were no longer hitting the tiles, but another chest. The air was colder now, in turn making the water seem hotter than before, searing his skin, steam rising faster to cloud the room.

He both felt and heard Loki take a step closer. He wasn't sure how he was so certain it was the Trickster behind him; perhaps because it was the only being that it possibly could be, considering the only other God he knew personally was Thor.

When the immortal made no move to touch him, he actually considered that he'd imagined the presence, and made to turn around and check, unabashed over his naked appearance. He'd barely turned his head before those strong hands were on his elbows from behind, keeping him still with the shock of touch.

His heart, which had been strangely calm, was now hammering.

"...Loki?"

The hold on his arms pulled him the small distance between his back and the God's chest. "I am quite flattered," Loki breathed, barely heard over the hiss of the shower stream. "You had no doubts it was I."

"Who else could it be?" Tony asked, because hearing his own voice was comforting. Though it kept him grounded to the reality that Loki could basically do whatever he pleased with him, it let him know he was still breathing. He was stripped bare, pinned like a butterfly, completely helpless under the God's scrutiny. "Loki, why are you in my shower?"

A tongue licked along the beaded gatherings of water along his neck, and Tony didn't bother repressing a shudder, deciding that Loki was doing this for a reason, and he shouldn't feel humiliation at being helpless. He didn't ask for this, it was given to him.

Tony's arms were released, and just as quickly those hands moved to his hips, holding the man firm as the God lapped gently at his throat. Each tease of his nerves had some part of him quivering or begging to move, the heat rising in him causing his head to spin dizzily. He didn't try and pull away or give in to the need growing in him, willing him to lean back into the body behind him. He stood still, biting back his moans, telling himself over and over that this wasn't something he should want.

"For a man who surrenders himself to the body," Loki hummed against his skin, "you seem quite reserved about me."

"You're the enemy," Tony breathed, knowing the God heard him even if a regular person wouldn't have. This all seemed so familiar, Loki playing him like an instrument, digging claws into his weakness. His weakness for touch.

"Yes, I am quite the dangerous conquest,"Loki admitted with pride, one smooth hand sliding up Tony's side toward his throat. There was a flare of warning in the back of Tony's head at the threat, but when Loki simply dragged his fingertips over the area that was no longer so bruised, he unconsciouslly relaxed.

"I don't trust you."

"I'm not asking you to," Loki huffed a quiet laugh into the nape of the mortal's neck. There was a scrape of teeth along the top of Tony's spine, and the man finally gave a small keen, chest rolling forward with the tingling sensation. No woman had ever touched him there, not like that.

"Your games don't fool me," Tony hissed, unable to shake the awareness that this was a bad idea. Not that he could do much about it.

He silently cursed himself for not being drunk enough not to give a fuck.

"Why, Anthony," Loki whispered, leaning into his ear now, and the mortal shuddered violently at the feeling of cold breath, "you already agreed to my terms. I came for my earnings."

Tony was silenced, attempting to mull over the words while Loki's other hand began its southerly journey, teasing at the unbearably sensitive dip just below his hip bones, and continuing the trail over the top of his thigh. The words sank in, and confusion dawned.

Just as he went to speak, the hand that had been by his throat slapped over his mouth, fingers that weren't quite so icy as they had been before now digging firmly into his cheek, palm muffling his words.

"I want your _true_ mask, Ironman. The one you refuse to take off for anyone. I _want_ you to take it off for _me._"

Tony had been deathly afraid of the hand smothering his voice, knowing that all the God would have to do is move his thumb to pinch his nose and he'd be suffocated. Now his only means of escape or calling for help had been removed. But when Loki's lower hand abruptly began touching him so intimately, hard enough to continue forcing the mortal's body back against the God's, he was suddenly very glad for the hand that held him silent.

He gave in and reached around to grab at Loki's hip, bucking himself into that strong, relentless hand, the hot water sliding over both of them now instead of just Loki. He grabbed at the hand that was hushing him, finding nothing to hold onto and moving to wrap his fingers around that small wrist. It felt almost delicate in his palm, but he knew it wasn't, squeezing hard to ground himself. If it had been anyone else's wrist, he'd probably have hurt them.

Knowing it was safe to do so, Tony allowed his mind to drift from keeping quiet, the sounds of pleasure hummed into Loki's skin.

Loki appreciated the response, mouthing at his neck again, sucking hard at a particularly delicate spot by his ear. The fact he couldn't take his mind off knowing this was the God of Mischief behind him, working him to climax, was surprisingly half the reason this felt so damn good, and rather than deterring him from the moment, it kept him anchored to it.

"Show me everything," Loki breathed, and Tony could feel the firm body behind him shift to pull him in even harder, keeping him steady. The hand that had been gripping Loki's wrist released, bracing himself on the wall, his knees going weak as heat began to wash over him on the inside as well as the outside. "Show me who you really are."

Tony bit down on the palm lightly, an almost pained cry spilling from his lips and into Loki's flesh. As the ecstasy overwhelmed him, white sparks seemed to light up behind his eyes. For the first time in months, there was absolute calm.

He fell loosely to the tiled floor, unable to hold himself up any longer, the evidence of their moment washing down the drain before he could even bring himself to open his eyes again, breathing erratic and pulse refusing to calm. By the time his lids parted, he already knew Loki was gone. The only proof he had of it even occurring were the tingles that were shimmying up and down all lengths of his skin, and the unmissable bruise just below his ear.

After several minutes, sitting there and feeling the rain of showerwater over his hung head, he still couldn't organise the complete disarray his feelings were in. He decided not to feel anything just yet and simply go to bed, curled up with a bottle of whisky.

.:.

* * *

**A/N: **Was I the only person who didn't know Robert Downey Jr could sing? Anyway, he has an amazing voice, and you can find his songs on youtube if you're curious.  
Thankyou everyone who has reviewed, faved, and put this story on alert. You only make me want to write more in a short amount of time! (I really hope to get this done before my inspiration runs flat and I have to move back onto my previous projects). I hope I made you happy with more Loki and Tony scenes, seeing that was the entire chapter.  
Well, once again, thankyou for all the reviews, they are much appreciated!

**Love, MK.**

_Devil: addiction or obsession, losing control over our actions. Sexual desires, uncontrolled energy. A situation better avoided._


	4. I: Star

**Note: **_Mention of Norse Mythology, 'Sleipnir'. It is not intended to be historically correct, as neither is the Avengers, and I am aware there is no mention of these myths in the movies. _

* * *

**Card Of Fools**

**IV**  
_Star_

.:.  
'

The Avengers knew something was wrong. It took them three days before anyone said anything about it, but the looks they were giving him let him know they were well aware something was disturbing him. They stared at the bruise by his ear whenever they thought he wasn't looking, knowing what it was but not how it got there, and sometimes he wondered if they were suspecting each other of giving him the hickey but were too embarrassed to ask. When they offered him food it was in silence, not questioning him when they'd finally take away the plate with the cold half he'd not brought himself to eat.

Jarvis was repeatedly asking him if he was alright, reminding him of his health and invisibly chasing him through the rooms with reminders that he wasn't looking after himself, spieling calculations about blood-alcohol limits, water-per-mass intake, and proper sleeping patterns. Tony wondered when he'd programmed the stupid thing to be so irritatingly human. It was starting to scare him how close to an actual personality his AI was developing.

He was always snapping back at the bodiless voice, angry that a computer seemed to be the only thing that cared enough for him to bother worrying over him. Sometimes, it'd hit him that he'd programmed Jarvis that way because he knew he needed looking after, so inadvertently Tony was only caring for himself. The first time he truly registered this, he nearly flipped out and broke the finished field-of-anti-electromagnetic-rotation, hefting one of the stabilisers off the ground, stopping himself just before he threw one at the large television in his workshop, setting the rather heavy object back in place.

It was morning, and again he was 'playing' on his tablet, absent-mindedly fiddling with the visual design of his suit, and wondering just why everyone seemed to be ignoring him.

He never considered that it was actually he himself who was ignoring them, but that was only because Tony Stark was selfish and didn't like to think of those things, because when he _did_ think of deep and meaningful things pertaining to realities about himself, he somehow ended up tangled in lustful encounters with enemy deities that had him considering handing in his notice of resignation.

By the time Steve approached him in the open living room, Bruce lingering a few feet away for moral support, the others looking over with interest though pretending they weren't, Tony looked grey and tired. He hadn't had a single healthy sleep since that night when Loki's visit had taken an unexpected turn, with the only rest his body received coming from drinking himself to a near comatose state.

Last night, he'd still had an open bottle in his hands as he'd nodded off on the couch. It had leaked half of the potent liquor on the white fur rug before Natasha, the mother hen she was, had capped it and left it on his bar, ordering Steve to take him to bed. Tony had been partially awake at that point because of her prodding to get him to release the bottle, but he allowed the other Avenger to unceremoniously drag him to his room like a ragdoll.

"Tony, we need to talk," Steve said carefully, blue eyes shining.

Spitefully, Tony wondered if they were kicking themselves for not heeding his earlier cries for help. As long as it'd taken, Tony was glad that they were finally cornering him about it. He needed someone to talk to, a person he could fess up all his all his bad deeds and his turmoil to. He'd never been the kind of person to actively seek out vulnerability; it had to come to him.

"You can't keep going on drinking. Your losing yourself, and you've become unreliable." Such simple words, yet Tony was shocked into simply staring up at Steve, who had begun to gesture his arms wildly about as he scolded the other man. "What if there was an emergency, or if Fury called us out. There is no way you'd be sober enough to take into battle. We need a team that can watch each other's backs, not members who go off on benders and spend days in a drunken fit."

When Steve had finished, he was breathing hard, arms folding stiffly over his chest. This had been building up for a long time. _That's the best he can do?_

Tony was still in a stupor when he spoke, the astonishment sounding in his voice. "_Fuck you_!" he shouted, voice a little higher in pitch than they others were used to. Steve actually flinched, taking a step away from Tony as the other man stood from the couch, eyes wild. "Who the fuck do you think you are? Where do you_ get off_ on that_ crap_, huh?"

"He's right," Clint piped up, and for a second Tony thought the archer was siding with him. "Don't take it out on Steve. As the leader of this team, he's doing his job."

Tony was staring at them as though their words had jolted him. "And what about as my friend?"

"We're concerned for you, Tony," Steve continued, holding out an arm to settle Clint back in his seat. "We've all talked about this, and we don't want Fury to kick you off the team."

Tony scoffed, not taking his eyes off the other man. When he saw that Steve was completely serious, he dissolved into laughter, turning his back on them, swiping a hand down his face. He tried to settle himself, but his shoulders shook, and each time he paused, the laughter rose back up in his throat.

Finally, the amusement died, and he stood there, holding himself, eyes slammed shut and trying to block out the presence of the others behind him. After what seemed like hours of calming his hysterics, Bruce's voice broke him out of his serenity.

"Tony-"

Whatever Bruce had been about to say was sliced off, Tony whirling around and throwing the nearest thing he could find. It happened to be a decorative glass lamp on an end table, and he shoved it to the marble ground, effectively silencing the other Avenger. It shattered with a piercing crash, glittering pieces sliding across the floor in all directions, shining prettily - just like tears shone prettily.

His team jumped, startled, and Tony shook his head at their mixed expressions, burying his elation at causing the reaction.

"Just shut the hell up," he spat, the words tasting vile in his mouth, "you have no idea. None of you have any idea."

"We're trying to help you," Steve pleaded.

"No, you're trying to help yourselves!"

The look on Steve's face may as well have been the aftermath of an unexpected slap. "What are you talking about?"

"Team comes first, right?" his words were as bitter as his expression. "You don't give a shit_ why_ I'm depressed, just that I'm not valuble to you when I am."

"What do _you_ have to be depressed about?" Clint's voice was rising, and somehow Tony knew he'd struck an impossible nerve in the archer. "You don't even know what depression is!"

"You don't know me, Hawkeye. Don't presume to know me for what you see."

"Oh, I know you. Greedy, self-centred, self-righteous," the younger man advanced, brushing off Steve's imploring hand and weak attempt to restrain him. "World at your feet but it's _still_ not enough. You have everything and yet you throw it away like it's cheap, disposable garbage! You treat people like they're worthless!"

"That's because_ I'm_ worthless!" Tony shouted, gesturing harshly to himself, glass crunching underfoot, unaware they'd drawn closer.

If the look of utter bafflement on the archer's face, crestfallen with dying energy, was anything to go by, that had been the last thing they'd expected from him. The next thing to go was the table the lamp had been seated on. Tony picked it up with one hand and threw it across his body in the same direction, uncaring when the effort had him swaying on his feet. It remained undamaged, but the loud, broken sound had the others wincing, Natasha shutting her eyes solemnly.

"Look, Tony," Bruce tried again, hands raised, and Tony automatically knew it was a guilty trip.

If he tried to pick a fight with Banner, if he said something out of line, it wasn't just knuckles that would be cracking him across the face, since there was the risk of him getting angry and exploding. The doctor was trying to get him to use his rational side by approaching. He was downright manipulating Tony, relying on him to be the smart man he was underneath the disaster of his conscience. _That b__astard..._

"Steve is right," the other man continued, sounding diplomatic and calm, "your personal issues are only going to affect everyone on the field. You need to work this out and find some help, for whatever it is you think is wrong with you."

Just weeks ago he'd been claiming he was crazy, and now he was saying he was depressed. Of course they didn't truly believe him. Next, they'd think he was a hyperchondriac after attention.

_This is pointless. It's like talking to a brick wall that talks back._

His shoulders slumped, and he knew his brown eyes went cold, but they obviously thought Banner had gotten through to him. Thor seemed to relax, offering up an encouraging smile, and Steve's attempt at a similar expression was watery at best. Tony didn't attempt to return it.

"After tonight, I want you all to pack your shit and get out."

Banner stepped back as though he'd been slapped, and Steve's reaction was no different. "W-what?" he muttered, sharing a quick look with Bruce.

"I said get the hell out of my building."

Clint was rising to the same level he'd been at before. "See? Here you go again! Just throwing us out because things don't go your way?"

"Exactly," Tony muttered in sarcasm, feigning a smirk.

"Friend," Thor began, and the look on his face was one of grave understanding. "Perhaps we should speak of this."

"We've done that. It's obviously gotten us nowhere," Tony retorted, ignoring them in favour of righting the table he'd thrown.

"Surely there is need for more consideration of your feelings on the issue," he pressed, and Tony actually wondered if there was a chance that the message had finally clicked with the blonde God. He didn't answer, crouching down and picking up the broken pieces of the lamp, pondering the offer. He'd stacked about half of the pieces before his decision was made for him.

"Don't even bother," Clint snapped, "he's_ Ironman_, he can take care of himself."

The words were harsh in a way he'd never thought possible. He clenched the glass in his hands, ignoring the slicing edges against his skin.

"I'm not Ironman. I'm not even Tony. I'm Anthony Stark, I own this building, and I want you all out of my sight."

Natasha's voice finally met his ears, and the sound that would usually be soothing turned grating. "You're just going to push us away? When we're trying to help, you're just going to shut us out?"

"I don't need your help." He dropped the glass back on the floor, wiping his bloodied hand on his jean front, unknowingly leaving a large smear on the light fabric that caught the sights of his team. "I've been alone all my life, you don't think I can handle myself now? I don't need people turning around and deciding they want me to listen to them. Not when nobody ever listened to me."

"You never came to us!" Steve protested, a strange awareness in his expression that had come moments too late. "If you needed us, we were right here!"

"Not all pain is heard in words, friend," Thor said for him, resigned. It actually hurt Tony to see the God looking so at a loss. A large, strong hand came to Steve's shoulders with sincerity, the Captain appearing torn. "He _did_ ask for help. He's always been asking for it."

Tony couldn't bare to look at the face of the God, or the array of expressions on the rest of his team. He closed his eyes, squeezing his damp fist and unknowingly dripping blood onto the floor. The pain soothed him in that moment, grounding back to earth while his body still thrummed in the distance. His head was light from the yelling, and there was a distasteful lump of emotion in his throat that had been making his voice gritty for at least half of the yelling.

"Forget everything I have said and done today," he said, voice controlled into flat monotone, "leave tomorrow, and there wont be any more problems from me."

When he returned to his room, glaring at the gashes in his palm and fingers, he felt the desperate claw of pain at his chest. He wanted to cry so badly, but he knew he wouldn't. Heartbreak did that to him.

.:.

* * *

"Sir-"

"What?" Tony snapped. He almost apologised for being so rude, before reminding himself that it was only Jarvis, and the computer wouldn't be offended by his tone.

"Master Thor has requested entry," the voice replied, and Tony gave a small, reluctant smile at the respectful title he'd given his friend. He was probably off his face at the time.

"Yeah, sure, let him in."

When Thor appeared at the glass front to his workshop, startled as a panel of the invisible material slid out of his path, Tony realised with a small shock that his friend had managed to go through the security to his private wing without the help of anyone else, and hopefully without breaking anything. He crossed his fingers out of Thor's sight.

"Forgive me, friend," Thor said, rubbing at the base of his neck, and Tony could see the God was a little flushed with frustration, "but in my ventures here, there is now a large ornamental vase that needs replacing."

Tony sighed, uncrossing his fingers and covering half his face with his hand. Well, at least now that he'd kicked them all out of his building, the fragile things that lined his walls would remain intact.

"It's fine," he mumured into his palm, exasperated.

Thor wasn't thick enough to look like he believed the man. "May I inquire how much it was worth?"

"Was it the really big, really old teracotta and gold leaf one that came waist-high?" Tony asked, pinching his lips together when the blonde immortal nodded slightly. He exhaling the words that followed. "Pepper won that at an auction, it's only worth a couple million. No biggie."

Thor's brow rose and creased. "But if I am correct, in Midgardian terms, that actually means it was quite expensive?"

Tony shrugged, giving Thor an unbothered look. "Nah."

"Nonetheless, I shall bring you a replacement myself, straight from my own chambers on Asgard!" Thor grinned, "I shall find one decorated in the purest of gold from my own realm, metal from the deepest, richest veins."

Tony was a little shocked at his enthusiasm, but also touched. The mask, as Loki had dubbed it, fell from his face, and he offered Thor a genuine, gentle smile. He tipped his head to the side, watching the grin spill over the golden God's face.

"Thankyou, Thor, really."

That was the first time they'd offered to replace anything they'd broken after he'd told Banner not to bother a few months ago, when he'd toppled an antique jug Tony had left sitting on his bench. He never told them he'd hoped they'd break it – Pepper refused to take the ugly thing and he couldn't bring himself to discard what had been a gift from a client.

"I had not realised," Thor began, pausing to pull up a tall barstool. Tony watched the large being awkwardly adjust himself on the small seat. He started again, "I had not realised, that such a simple gesture would content you. Perhaps I had not been quite the good friend I thought I was being."

As usual, Thor made his heart bleed.

"Don't," Tony halted the God's guilt, holding up a hand toward him, before casually waving away. "It wasn't you, not really. You almost convinced me out of kicking you lot out."

Thor's lack of vibrant expression was really starting to make Tony regret.

"I do not understand, not as well as I'd hope," Thor said honestly. "The only emotions I'd ever had to bare aside from my own were that of my mother and my brother. And, as you can see, I didn't shoulder those duties as well as I should have."

The hand he reached over to set on Thor's knee wasn't intentional, but a smile of gratitude graced the God's face at the sympathy and Tony decided he'd done the right thing. This was the first forward attempt at bonding with one of his teammates he was aware of making. Somehow, it had to come at just the wrong time.

"You know, you aren't banished from here or anything. Think of it more like a suspension. I just need some time alone, and I'm not leaving you lot here to destroy my things while I run away from my own building. Plus, Natasha snoops, and it makes me feel weird about things I shouldn't feel so weird about."

This seemed to reassure his friend somewhat, and the God stopped fidgeting on his seat, seemingly forgetting his previous discomfort. "Thank the heavens," Thor said quietly, which for him was still fairly loud, "I was quite worried our friendship was irrepairable, like your vase. I would detest having to go find a new Tony Stark."

This caused a laugh to bubble out of Tony's throat. He slouched down in his own chair, running his fingers over his facial hair and resting his other hand casually over his stomach. Thor seemed to mirror his ease. Somehow, saying those words had made everything alright again.

If he'd miss anyone, it'd be Thor.

"Speaking of, you said your replacement will be from your own chambers?" Tony noticed with scientific curiosity that his speech changed to a more formal, near 'Asgardian' manner, as opposed to Thor picking up on and adjusting to the language of mortals. The adaption was not unpleasant. "I never took you for being much for the aesthetic arts."

Thor shook his head. "No, my brother was one for finery, not I. Anything of such that adorns my chambers was his doing." There was a fond chuckle, "he was always surprising me with gifts like that – always had to, I broke them so easily. He never got angry with me, though. Just called me a bafoon and replaced it." He hadn't seemed to notice the mortal steadily going pale until the end of his telling. "Friend, are you well?"

"Uh, y-yeah, I'm fine. So...Loki...the vase you'll bring, it was his gift to you?"At Thor's widening smile, Tony shook his head. "Then you shouldn't, I can't accept it."

"Why, because it'd been in my brother's hands?" Thor asked, frowning and defensive.

"_I've_ been in your brother's hands, I don't see the difference." Tony flushed, both at the blunt truth of his words and the rudeness of his response. He silently thanked that Thor had seen him lose, painfully so, to Loki. "No, I only meant...well, wouldn't he be offended?"

"I don't believe he'd ever return to discover it missing." Thor gave a shake of his head, looking saddened now, and Tony felt like he'd kicked a box of puppies or something equivalently evil. How one being could mill through so many emotions in such a small space of time was beyond him.

He wanted to say something to cheer Thor up, encourage him that his brother, related or not, would return to him one day. He wasn't one for encouraging what may be false hope, though, and decided it was best not to say anything.

"Stark, are you _well?_" Thor asked again, but this time, the grave tone of his voice had Tony staring blankly at him. There was so much carried on those words, questions about this morning seeking to be answered, and Tony could only voice the truth.

"I...don't know."

With a reluctant nod, Thor stood, brushing his hands over his jeans, something he was always doing in admiration of the unusual texture. He was dressed casually, thankfully, and it made Tony feel better about having a God for a friend if he could convince himself they were on the same level.

"Man of Iron, do I understand correctly that I may still see you on the battle field, the next time we go up against my brother?"

Suddenly, the room felt strangely cold, and Tony ran his teeth over his lip distractedly. "Your brother's gonna be the death of me," he admitted, mind elsewhere. Thankfully, Thor took it as an answer to his question, and gave him a semi-amused look.

_He doesn't even know how much is staring him in the face,_ he thought.

Ice ran up the length of his spine, as though ghoulish fingers were tracing it beneath his clothes. He considered telling Thor then and there of everything, the passive encounters, Loki's gentle understanding, their laision in the shower. How helpless he felt to do anything about it, and how he wasn't even sure he really wanted to.

"Thor," he said quickly, following the God's path toward the front of his workshop. He felt a shudder at the cold that seemed to spike in that particular spot, and he noted to check the thermostat himself this time. Those wide, fiercely innocent blue orbs stared him down, and he forgot the unbalanced temperatures of his home. "Your brother, Loki...is he...how evil do _you_ think he is?"

Thor sighed gently, and Tony hated himself for kicking the box of puppies again. "Please understand this, Anthony, for no one else will hear of it. My brother isn't evil, he's alone. He feels he has no one to turn to, and I regret the wrongs I've committed against him in our lives, because I fear that it has come to this because of me. If only I'd been a better brother and held him when he cried, or heard him when he spoke, acknowledged him when he followed after me in concern...I brushed him off all our lives, and now that I'm finally reaching out to him, he's turned away."

There were tears lining Thor's eyes, mourning for a brother that was not yet dead, and Tony bit his lip, before making his decision and wrapping his arms around the God. It was a little awkward, being that Thor was larger than himself by a very noticable amount, never mind the fact that Tony Stark doesn't hug, but when the immortal's arms came around him in a fierce embrace, he noticed that the God in against his chest had never seemed so small.

The cold felt almost static, but Tony brought himself to ignore it, focussing on his friend, who continued to confess his pain. What he said shocked Tony harder than he'd ever been shocked in his life.

"I found him, the day he was cursed to bare Sleipnir."

Tony thought the name sounded familiar, recalling that Thor and Loki were Norse Gods and that he'd studied mythology for a month before growing tired of it. He remembered it then to be an eight-legged horse, but he couldn't quite remember the story. He'd honestly never considered that the myths had any truth to them, thinking they were rumours at best. It never occurred to him to ask, because he'd forgotten about it.

"I was angry with him at first, thinking he'd given himself so freely to a beast to save his skin, and he knows that's what I had thought even if I never spoke of this to him. I could see his pain, and I didn't know what to do, how to comfort him, so I took him home and nursed him for the many months I had to. After the birth...he was sobbing at my feet, but I...I took the child to the Allfather as I'd been ordered, and left him there. I should have stayed with him, my duty to my brother should have overruled our father in that moment, but I didn't know how to...accept..."

Tony was silenced. He thought back to the times he'd seen the Trickster, and tried to imagine him curled up on the floor, terrified and tearful – the image was so foreign and unpleasant, and Tony had no idea what to think. Thor had just insinuated that Loki had been taken against his will...

It hit him then, the tale of Sleipnir. The creature was Loki's son.

_Just how far does the line of betrayals stretch?_ Feeling Thor pull away from him, Tony let his arms fall limp by his sides, staring sadly at his friend._ And how long has Thor been keeping this at bay? Knowing how long he's lived, probably centuries. _

"There are many wrongs in our history, and yet, each time, Loki returned to me. He stood at my side all those years, offering advice, even if sometimes they were words of mischief. He even spoke to me before all others when I was mad, a very unwise decision for most. He had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. I was all he had."

Dully realising that the room was staticy more than it was cold, he turned his eyes to the floor, unsure how to take the information. He'd known Loki's life in Asgard had been partial to suffering, but he could see things now he'd never seen before. Staring at Thor now, he had a hazy suspicion, but decided not to voice it.

If there was truth to it, Thor could come to him with it.

"You know," he spoke lightly, hoping to draw away from the darkness that had fallen over their conversation, "he's never going to talk to you if you're part of an elite team assembled to take him down."

Thor's smile was pained. "What other choice do I have?"

A startling feeling of kinship rose with Tony's new understanding of his friend. The immortal being he'd thought was so strong and so untouchable was just as wounded as himself, with just as many secrets and things that shouldn't have been left unsaid. Tony knew that, in his life, there were many words he'd trade over for being spoken and unspoken, the memories of them haunting him for years past.

He wanted to tell Thor it would be okay, but just as earlier, he refrained, not wanting to be just like everyone else his friend may confide in. He wouldn't say what Thor wanted to hear.

Besides, who was _he_ to give advice to a God?

"Farewell, my friend," Thor said, and there was an element of relief in his voice, not at leaving but at having come in the first place. Tony just nodded, a smirk pulling his features.

"Don't forget, you owe me a valuable artefact."

Thor chuckled, waving a hand at him, and began his horrendous journey out of the maze of technology and security that was Tony Stark's building.

"I expect you'll be seeing us out tomorrow?"

"Whatever makes you happy, big guy."

With Thor left the uncomfortable sensations of cold electricity that had filled his workshop, and Tony was left to think over these new revelations in peace.

.:.

* * *

The others were all asleep by the time Tony made his way to the bar. They were all getting an early night so they could pack in the morning, Jarvis informed him.

A part of him wondered if kicking the other Avengers out was the worst mistake he could possibly make. After all, if he was all alone in the building, and Loki visited him again, there would be no way of seeking out help. Not that there had been anyway, but it was a sense of security that there were super-powered beings living just a floor away, and they'd come to his aid if he called.

Providing they didn't think he was just drunk.

He still wasn't certain that Loki was harmless, though he was starting to feel himself lull toward believing him. Which was bad, because Loki, the God of Lies himself, was Ironman's enemy. The only thing Loki should be interested in was throwing him out another window, not getting him off in the shower.

There were too many doubts surrounding the Trickster at the moment, and Tony needed to get his head on straight.

He poured himself a near full glass, sloppily spilling a bit over the edge. With an aggravated grunt, he turned to find a dish towel and clean up the mess, when he came face-to-face with the God he'd just been musing about.

"Well, speak of the devil," he said boldly, and it occurred to him that perhaps he shouldn't have had those first two drinks while in the workshop, because he really never knew when it was occasion to shut the hell up on a _sober_ day.

Loki, however, once again didn't seem angry. There was a blank expression on his face instead, however, and Tony couldn't decide if that was better or worse. Not knowing what the Trickster was thinking was possibly a fatal point in this game and a warning to back away.

He was about to do so, already lifting a foot to take the large step around the edge of the bar, hoping to at least put that between them, but Loki grabbed him by his shoulders. The movement was quick, and before he'd even noticed he'd been pulled around, he found his back against the cool stone wall, now facing the bar, a row of sharp-edged shelves with most of his glasses just inches from his left shoulder.

There was a fair distance between their bodies, thankfully, because Tony didn't want Loki to know that his was betraying him so wantonly. That small but powerful shove and the proximity of the enticing God were exciting enough without the memories of what had happened the last time they were in the same room.

He had a feeling he was in denial over being a masochist, and he'd subconsciously sought out the most sadistic bastard he could find, but that was only a theory concocted to explain why he physically reacted so, despite his fear.

But, of course, Loki noticed what Tony didn't want him to. His cat-like eyes scanned the human's body, taking in the slight arch of his hips off the wall, naturally seeking contact. It was a vast difference from attempting to melt through the wall, as he would have given a fair shot had Loki pinned him like this a week ago. The God very obviously noticed that the front of Tony's jeans were strained, because his gaze lingered there, and when it rose back to Tony's slack face, he'd leaned in just slightly, as though planning to do something. He obviously decided against it, whatever it was.

Tony fully expected to be ridiculed, or struck down, or even for the God to meet his body against the wall. He didn't expect a complete turn of conversation.

"You should not speak with my brother about me," were the first words Tony heard from Loki's mouth. He decided that now wasn't the time to point out that he'd referred to Thor as his brother.

"_He_ brought it up," Tony justified.

Loki's glare wasn't furious so much as intense, but it was still frightening, and admittedly a little attractive. _Yep, definitely a masochist._

"_You_ encouraged it."

Tony didn't deny it, because there was something strangely stupid about the idea of lying to the God of Lies. Rather than being frozen, Tony grabbed Loki's hands that had found purchase on his shoulder's before he could think of a reason not to, guiding them from his body. Loki allowed the gesture, willingly dropping his arms to his sides when Tony let go.

"My apologies?" the mortal offered, wishing it'd come across more sincere.

"Don't ask questions about me," Loki sounded different, like his voice wasn't his own. "Please."

He decided not to answer, just in case he couldn't keep his promise. After all, only one heartfelt conversation with Thor later, and he alread knew...perhaps more than Loki wanted him to know. It was quite obvious Thor only confided the experience to him in the belief that Loki would never come to know of it.

His brain decided to betray him and affirm his alleged masochistic tendencies by bringing it back up. "It wasn't your fault, whatever happened to you." The last half of his sentence was rushed, noting that Loki's eyes had narrowed with the continuation of the subject.

"You know what happened to me, Stark. It was very long ago, it doesn't affect me any longer."

"But it does, though, doesn't it?" Tony asked. He flinched a little at the furious edge that had began to burn around Loki's iris. He'd made his decision, and he wasn't turning back now. "You have a child, Thor rejected you when you needed him, and no doubt you were ridiculed-"

"Of course I was ridiculed! What Prince of the House of Odin has a child out of wedlock, and births it himself? What worthy son allows himself to be taken by a beast? I was _lucky_ the King was so merciful to allow my stay in the palace with my bastard, they said!"

Tony knew the expression on his face was soft, and that was probably the worst thing at a time like this. After his wake-up call and the trauma he endured at the hands of terrorists, in turn awakening the latent pain of his parents' death, he'd found himself sympathising with victims of just about anything. Particularly ones that were full of emotion and didn't know what to do with it.

Sure, attempting to commit homicide, patricide, fratricide, and genocide were all at the extreme end of the 'severe retaliations' scale, but Tony had found himself reaching that first notch, taking the lives of people in justice of himself. He knew what it was like to be in a place where all you wanted to do was hurt everything and everyone that ever hurt you. Loki was a God, and couldn't be expected to do things in small measures.

Reaching out to Loki was still probably one of the most stupid things he'd done, because everything the Trickster was doing with his hurt was hence destructive and not particularly favourable of mortal lives. Tony wasn't so proud to consider himself set aside from other people.

He was like an abused child lashing out at small animals. You wouldn't punish him to death, you'd reach out and you'd try and help him. You would make him see what it is that's so wrong. Tony only wished someone had been there to govern him in his own life, rather than leaving it in his calloused hands.

"You have no business pitying me, Man of Iron," Loki hissed at him. Tony knew it was because of the gentle look still on his face at the God's small outburst.

"You should learn the difference between pity and empathy," Tony reasoned, steeling himself against those deep green eyes that refused to leave him. Loki looked lost, as though he'd had a path marked out and Tony had gone and erased it with a few drops of liquid courage.

He wasn't sure what he expected to come of this move. It was like he was playing chess with his eyes closed, just throwing whatever pieces any which-way he could, hoping they landed on the right square. In that case, Loki was both the opponant and the board.

"Why the change, Anthony?" Loki asked, his curiosity a flicker of fire that was so familiar it was calming. "Why are you intent on knowing me so?"

"Because I'm not the only one hiding who I am. Everything you want to see from me, I want to see it too," Tony explained, "from _you._"

He was usually good at reading expressions, but the look on Loki's face was so many things he couldn't identify which. The God took a staggered step back, and dissolved into the air, leaving the mortal still pressed up against the wall, reeling. Emotions were crashing like converging storms, and he let himself simply feel them, wondering without surprise over the contradictions he found there.

All this sideways 'enemy, my enemy' contact was screwing with his head.

He tossed back the drink once he willed himself to detatch from the wall, hissing as it burned particularly hard. With all hopes of getting a decent sleep with all of this on his mind now lost, there was nothing else for him to do other than spend the night in his workshop, dreading the morning when he'd part ways with his team.

.:.

* * *

**A/N:** Perhaps I should write in popular genre more often - I'm greatly enjoying the attention this story is getting. I'm not used to having a story so well noticed in but a few days. I have a feeling this story is going to go a lot longer than I'd originally anticipated, just like all my stories.  
I hope the whole 'Sleipnir' addition wasn't too cliche or off-putting - I happened to have a fling with Norse Mythology in my childhood and this was one of the only parts I still remember to this day. It's necessary for the plot.  
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy!

**Love, MK**

_Star: shines brightly to offer guidance to those who feel lost. Renewal, harmony, hope, and potential. _


	5. I: Judgement

**Card of Fools**

**V**  
_Judgement_

.:.  
'

Tony stood on the pavement, staring at the two cabs that he'd called as they arrived. Behind him, Banner and Steve automatically began picking up the scientist's many delicate bags and cases, loading them into the back as soon as the trunk was raised.

Nobody was meeting his eyes for longer than a few seconds aside from Thor, who seemed to be doing the complete opposite of the rest of his team and trying to lock Tony in a staring contest. The man skilfully avoided the attempt, convinced he'd blink first.

_That, and I don't want him seeing something and suspecting..._

Thor knew something, Tony was sure of it. He wondered if the God could sense Loki's magic, or feel him when he was close. Perhaps Thor had an idea that Loki teleported in and out of Stark Tower like he owned the place, but the real concern would be as to why Tony hadn't bothered trying to update his security.

Finally, Banner's things were packed into the cab, and Steve's simple knapsack was thrown into the back seat. The genius was immediately casting a smile at Tony, as though there had truly been no fight the day before.

"Well, see you 'round, Stark," Banner said, holding out his hand. Tony stared at it, confused, until Thor nudged him discreetly and he took the offered hand too quickly, squeezing.

"Yeah, I'm sorry things went south before the winter..." Tony murmured, "I mean, you _did_ fly all the way out here."

Banner brushed the apology off, still not releasing Tony's hand. "It's no problem, I kinda like flying, and SHIELD pays for all the fairs. I'm not really going anywhere, though. I'm just staying with Steve wherever they put us." There was a funny look in his eyes that, at first, Tony couldn't place. The man was waiting for a reply, it seemed.

"Still, I'll keep in touch, and if you ever need anything, well, you know, just call...or something."

"I will," Banner replied, the look still in his eyes. "And _you_...if you need_ anything_, or if something happens, promise you'll call me?"

That look in the other man's eyes seemed suddenly so heavy now. Bruce was actually worried about him, if not a little fearful for him. The man was an intellect, Tony wouldn't put it past him to know something about what was going on, either. He knew the other was very interested in Loki's sparing him.

"Yeah, I will."

"Promise, Stark."

"I'll swear in blood if it'll make you feel better, big man," Tony's mouth ran with him, filling in the space he'd been failing to as of late. Bruce was satisfied with his retort, and gave him a nod, glancing over the others. He gave them a wave, which was actually less of a farewell than he gave Tony, then moved into the car, sliding across the seat and onto the side behind the driver.

Steve, who had been leaning against the cab, pushed off. He didn't say anything, just offered his hand. When Tony took it, the grip was too tight, and he wasn't quite sure if it was simply because of Steve's immense strength or if he was squeezing on purpose.

"Until next time," he said curtly, shook the hand once, and turned away quickly, slamming the door of the cab shut behind him. He and Bruce were gone in a matter of seconds, the cab melting into the traffic.

Natasha, the girl with personal-space issues and practically electrified boundaries around her virtue, surprised him by wrapping him in a hug before he'd even torn his eyes away from the back of the vehical. He returned it carefully, wondering if something was wrong. When she pulled back, she had the same default expression on her face as always, her arms still slung around his neck. For the first time since he'd met her, stood at Pepper's side, he had no urge of attraction toward her.

She was beautiful, indeed, and her body was amazing, but he had no want to feel skin against his own. For the first time since he'd seen her, there was an affection that was not born of desire.

She was so young, and so strong, but her big eyes staring at him like that provoked a different sensation that confused him.

He wanted to protect her, which was irrational because she'd no doubt be able to kick his ass any day of the week, and could probably kill him with the nearest and most mundane of blunt, movable objects. He wasn't sure if it was an attachment to her as a person, or the fact that she'd been one of the few people he'd entrust his life to and had allowed to share a residence with him, but the urge was almost paternal.

She watched the shift in his previously blank expression with intuitive eyes, noting the way the man's brow seemed to furrow. She went to release him, but the arms around her tightened and he pressed his face into her hair. She quickly returned the squeeze, and Tony knew he'd done something very shocking yesterday for her to act like this.

It wasn't that she'd never embraced him, because she had done so once before, but it had never been like this – lingering and sweet, and he wanted to tell her everything, just as he'd wanted to tell Thor everything.

"You take care now, okay?" she said quietly into his ear. He closed his eyes and breathed in the gentle scent of her hair. "I don't want to have to come over here and kick your ass because you've done something stupid."

"You know me, Nat. If you want me to stop doing stupid things, you might as well not even bother going."

They parted, and the intent look on her face told him that she could see right through him and his tentative invitation to stay. She knew he was regretting his brash decision to kick them out. She gave him a playful knuckles to his cheek, the mock punch making him grin at her.

"No, you need to do this, whatever it is, on your own."

He gave her an understanding nod, and she grabbed her tiny suitcase, clicking in the handle and moving into the back seat of the remaining cab, the impatient driver immediately shooting her a demanding question.

Tony hadn't needed to ask to know that the only of his guests that would be leaving the city would be Thor, who would return to Asgard for the time being. They were all in contact distance, and were all still on call. Just SHIELD didn't have their pet weapons master acting as a hotel manager, and now_ they_ had to provide for the Avengers and play host.

Clint was in the car and rigid next to Natasha, no bags since he'd put them in the trunk while Tony wasn't watching, shutting the door without a single farewell. Tony decided it wouldn't affect him, and smiled a little to see through the rear window when Black Widow started glaring at the archer. Thor shifted his feet restlessly, and the two of them silently returned to the building, mechanically having the elevator take them up to the penthouse floor.

"That went better than I'd thought," Thor admitted halfway up, giving Tony a proud look. "I'm glad you went to see them off. Natasha and Bruce were quite grateful."

"Clint, the bastard, hates me," Tony retorted. Thor didn't seem to pick up on the joking tone, and Tony wondered if he'd found the insecure way those words made him feel just by listening.

The God gave him a very direct look. "He doesn't hate you. You frustrate him. He is not a patient man and you brush off every attempt at bonding with you he has ever made, and if there's anything I've gathered about Barton, it's that he doesn't try and connect with people often. He has many trust issues, and to be shoved away when he actively tries to understand you, it exhausts him. That is why he is so offended by you."

It hurt to hear those words, said so simply and in blatant fact. "Not my intention," he mumbled, glaring at the shiny, blurred reflection of himself in the steel doors of the elevator.

"He is also angry at himself," Thor continued, seeing the empty slate of the mortal's expression. "We all are."

"You shouldn't be. He's right, I do shove everyone away. I don't even do it on purpose. I just say the first thing that comes to mind, and sometimes it's such a load of bullshit that I don't know why I bothered talking in the first place. I just have my finger on the trigger, all the goddamned time."

A prickle ran up Tony's arm beneath his sleeve closest to Thor, but it was a warm, stifling sensation, nothing at all like the cold of his home. It was uncomfortable.

Thor surprised Tony then, slamming him against the wall of the elevator and pinning him there with a forearm under the mortal's throat, the force of the spontaneous attack hard enough to force the wind out of his body. The God reached abruptly for the Arc Reactor in Tony's chest, his fingertips gripping the edge of it through his shirt. Sickening fear consumed Tony, who saw the edges of his vision bleeding black. It was all of a second of being paralyzed with shock before he threw out his fist, punching Thor in the jaw as hard as he could possibly manage.

With the God falling away, Tony steeled himself and threw a second fist into Thor's gut, forgetting about the feeling as though he'd broken his knuckles, focussing his wild gaze on Thor, who fell back against the opposite wall of the elevator.

Tony was breathing heavily, his chest still shuddering with fear, incredulous that his friend would try to do such a thing. He'd broken out into a cold sweat, pulse thrumming anxiously in his throat. Backing away into the corner of the elevator, dilated eyes on the immortal. Tony flexed his hands that felt as though they'd been broken, and waited, preparing himself for another attack.

Thor just straightened himself against the wall, lifting his hands in surrender. He looked apologetic, but there was a purpose in his stance, the way he stayed back.

"Why! Why the hell would you do that!" Tony hissed, and it may have sounded a little hysterical because Thor flinched, eyes rounding in worry.

"I made a point, Anthony," he insisted, and a disbelieving sound made it's way from Tony's throat.

"There was no _fucking point_, you just tried to take it out!"

"I merely touched it."

"Don't you dare do that ever again," he spat, viciously, slamming a hand protectively over the cold magnet lodged in his chest. "Never, do you hear me? Or I'll maim you and gift-wrap you for your brother!"

Pause was thrown over them, like a net cast from either side, entangling them in tense threads. At first, the God appeared to bristle at being spoken to in such a disrespectful tone, but soon remembered that the mortal was not talking down to him, but was feeling betrayed. His look softened. He was no longer on Asgard, and Tony was his friend, not his subject.

"How can you ever expect to be cared about if you can't give them reason and let them near your heart?" Thor asked, and Tony suddenly felt very dizzy. He slumped into the corner, and when the elevator jolted at its stop, his legs gave out and he fell to the ground, one hand clutched over the Arc and the other splayed against the floor. "I'd never intend harm on you, my friend. It hurts me to know you'd believe I would."

The doors slid open, and Thor gave him a mixed look, offering his hand to Tony. The man just stared at it, making no move to take it, and slowly the God allowed his hand to drift back to his side.

"I will make this up to you one day, I promise," he said solemnly, sounding as though he'd just realized how grave his mistake had been, and Tony couldn't even find it in himself to feel bad for being the cause of the God's distress.

.:.

* * *

Tony had calmed himself enough to pretend he was fine with such a personal invasion, slapping on an easy-going smile and dredging up a bit of humour as he saw Thor off. The second the God was out of sight again, being warmly greeted back into his own realm, Tony felt his gut quivering with the urge to throw up.

The last person to make a grab for his Arc had been Obadiah, a man he'd thought of as a father and a friend, and a man who had inevitably torn it from his chest.

If he couldn't even trust his own surrogate father with the Arc, how was he supposed to be perfectly fine with Thor, a God he'd only known for a few months, and united over a common goal he wasn't so sure existed anymore.

He saw Thor's point, but at the same time, the immortal had absolutely no idea what he'd just done.

So when he sat on the leather couch, kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, and hesitantly lifted his shirt to his teeth, holding it away from his torso as he brushed his fingertips over the glowing component lodged between bone and flesh, he was almost scared of his own hands.

_What if, one day, I decide I've had enough and simply tear it out? Then what?_

He traced the patterns over the lid of glass, then the circle of silvery, scarred skin along the outside. It wasn't the prettiest thing, and his desires to bed women had greatly diminished since he'd obtained it. He hated the way they looked at it in awe, running their hands over it like they had a right to, and stopped just to ask him about it.

He never told them it was what kept him alive, but they all guessed as much.

He was a little shocked to realise that he'd not had many partners since, and the best of them had been Pepper, who already knew about it and had even helped him overcome his unease about it. She'd literally seen inside his chest, literally held his heart in her hands, and was probably the best thing that had ever happened to him.

And then he got scared. He was scared of what that would mean, surrendering himself to one person, who had been there through everything and had seen him take and leave so many women. He was scared because Pepper deserved more than sour memories that would take years to dissolve with faithful touch. He was scared because nobody, not even her, knew what he kept in him, all his insecurities and all his desires.

Sure, she had probably guessed, but it wasn't the same as being told.

Loki, though, seemed to just know. He just_ knew_ everything.

It occurred to him that Loki had touched his Arc, and he hadn't even thought twice on it, much the way he hadn't been bothered when Pepper would trace it through his shirt or rest her lips on the glass.

Tony had been more frightened of Thor, future King of Asgard, touching the Arc Reactor than he'd been of his Trickster brother, their enemy. Hands stained with innocent blood had sooner been trusted with such a burden than those of his friends.

_I wonder,_ he thought absently, trailing off_, if I were to die by removing this thing from my chest, would it be painful?_

"Should I be concerned?" Loki's abrupt voice cut through the drawn silence.

Tony, shirt still between his teeth, craned his neck to follow the voice. Behind him, at the back of the lounge, Loki stood, leaning over curiously to peer down the length of Tony's chest. The sunlight that literally poured into the room at this time of day lit the God up from the back, the curls at the ends of his raven hair catching it in silvery flicks.

A backlit God with a marble face and lime flames in the iris of his eye was a sobering sight. Tony released his shirt, quickly tugging it back down over his stomach.

"Do you even know how?"

Their eyes locked when Loki tore his eyes from the covered Arc abruptly at the mortal's snappish reply. "Would I still come to you if I weren't capable of compassion?"

Tony smirked but there was no amusement. "You don't really want me to answer that."

He stood now, hurrying his way over to the bar and trying to forget their last meeting the night before, where he'd stupidly sought after some kind of connection with the deity behind him. Loki was following him, light tread hesitant at first, mind probably also returning to his hasty retreat and his unwitting revelation. It was an odd dance they did indeed. Tony was still stuck somewhere between hostility, passive-aggressive threats, sexuality, and regrettably desperate need.

He'd rather not think about that right now. Thinking didn't bode well for him when Loki was around.

Realising he was likely to short-circuit his brain if he let himself be tugged between how Thor had made him feel and how Loki was now making him feel, he selected the strongest bourbon his fridge had to offer. When he pulled out two glasses, Loki frowned.

"I have yet to accept your offer-"

"Don't forget, this is _my_ building. If you don't like anything, feel free to leave," he gestured with his thumb over his shoulder, angled somewhere between the wall and the ceiling. Really, indicating in any direction would have the same punctuating effect.

Loki gave the stony mortal's face a small frown and fell silent, a small twitch of his pale lips the only indication that he'd wanted to say something in return. It should have been comforting to know that the God knew what to say and when - a trait he himself regrettably didn't have - but it was instead rather unnerving. Loki was a master manipulator, according to his brother.

He knew he was lashing. Thor had scared him, and the revelation that he'd sooner let Loki touch his Arc Reactor was a biting one. While the Trickster had yet to do anything to provoke the mortal's anger, he received it.

It made Tony feel horrible, especially after what he'd just found out about his new company. As he finished pouring the second glass, the snappiness had abated, and he gave a resigned sigh as he put the bottle away. He just wanted to take the edge off, after all, not get hammered.

Loki was being uncharacteristically silent, and Tony knew it was his fault. That wasn't necessarily the warmest welcome he could have given.

Tony wasn't one for purposely lying to himself, so he knew he wasn't particularly happy that Loki had just taken off last night, like he was scared of having the tables turned on him. At the same time, Tony knew that if he were in the God's position, he'd probably be ashamed – it wasn't every day your darkest hours were pulled off the shelf of your past and had the dust from being forgotton blown away. He knew what it was like to have old pain under his boot, on the verge of crushing it for good, only for someone to put it right back in his hands, forcing him to stare at it and just _remember_.

He handed the glass to Loki, who stared indeterminably at it, before accepting it in such a way he looked like it was painful to hold the glass. Tony never managed to pull his hand away before those long, thin fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding his hand extended. He watched as the raven immortal, with the glass still in his hand, ran a thumb over the fabric of the flesh-coloured bandaids crossing his palm and fingers.

Tony carefully extracted his hand. He grabbed his own drink, deciding to indulge rather than throw it down, sipping at it. He stared out the large stretch of floor-to-ceiling windows, as though in thought. Anything to avoid the look Loki was giving him.

He heard the deity give a small, tired exhale. "Is this because of what I did last night, or because of what I did the occasion before last?"

Tony didn't turn from the windows, peering at the God from the corner of his eyes. "Look," he glanced away again, "last night, you don't need to explain that. We'll jump that gap when we get to it."

"So it was before that, then..."

"Why do you care what's eating at me?" Tony asked, setting his still mostly full glass back on the marble bench, still yet to mention it had been Thor to put him in this strained mood. He was too curious to say otherwise.

Loki grimaced as he took a sip of the liquid, then took another, this reaction milder than the first. Finally, he tipped his head back and sculled the drink, and Tony couldn't help but think he just wanted to get the formality overwith so that he wouldn't be asked again.

_Blind and fast, like a bandaid,_ he thought.

Loki wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, and it was held at such a delicate angle that it reminded him that his guest wasn't just a God, he was _royalty._ There was such a formal, princely air to everything he did, even dabbing at his lips with the side of his forefinger to be sure he didn't spill any liquor, his skin smooth and uncalloused.

"I _don't_ care," Loki said finally, but the tone of his voice was sarcastic. "I just let myself be vulnerable to all my enemies, and drop in on them for casual chit-chat whenever the fancy strikes."

"Wouldn't want you doing me any favours," Tony remarked, following the Trickster's lead and downing his drink just as harshly. He made to pour another, removing it from the fridge once more. "What do you want, Loki."

The God didn't answer him, sharply turning his head away to glare out the windows as Tony had earlier. Tony watched Loki's jaw move as the immortal ground his teeth. He set the bottle on the counter, making no move for his now refilled drink.

"What, I'm not worth answering?"

The look that was shot at him from Loki's eyes said 'no, you're not', but that was probably just Tony's overworked, paranoid mind. "You _know_ what I want," Loki said instead. Tony blinked, and the raven was vanished from his sight. His chest lurched as it always did, still not quite able to comprehend how a being could simply do that, not after a lifetime of growing up where those kinds of things were no more than myths and dreams.

In an instance of deja-vu, Loki reappeared right before Tony's eyes, the man looking up at the pale God for no more than a second before large hands were grabbing his shirt. Loki walked him back, and this time, when his back met the stone wall, almost exactly over the same spot he'd been the night before, Loki's knee fit between his thighs, drawing their bodies closer.

"I came for my prize, and I wont give you peace until I am satisfied I have retrieved it," he hissed. Tony thought Loki looked more angry than he did anything else, a determined set to his jaw, teeth no longer grinding.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Tony asked, feeling the ice of dread in his stomach dissolve to a warmer, fluttery sensation when Loki drew closer.

"I do not lie when I say I want your true mask, Tony. I want it gone, so I never have to look at the cursed thing again," Loki spoke the words so close to Tony's face that those cool lips brushed a trail over his cheek and the corner of his mouth. "You should not have agreed to my terms so readily."

Tony couldn't help the need to swallow, mouth feeling particularly dry. "...if you're toying with me-"

"There are by far many easier ways to torment you, Anthony," Loki chuckled against his ear, nipping gently at the lobe. A thrilling shiver shot down Tony's spine. "Rest assured."

"And...and why..." Tony stumbled, the God rocking their hips together firmly. "Why me?"

Loki pulled back at that, a pure look of confusion tipping his features down in such a way that, were he and Thor brothers by blood, would have been the one similarity between them. "I am not sure."

It occurred to him then that he was talking, delaying Loki's obvious intentions, when his mouth could be doing many more productive things. He quickly grabbed the God's thin hips, as though to reassure himself that the immortal wasn't about to just disappear and leave him desperate, then remembered exactly who it was he was holding onto.

Before he had the chance to release his hold, Loki's gentle touch rested atop them, reassuring him. Tony couldn't see Loki's face, as it was pressed into his neck and nibbling in a terribly teasing way, but he heard the calm voice clearly, warm against his ear. "This is fine," Loki insisted, "you are no stranger to intimacy." The sentence was punctuated with a firmer grazing of teeth over the junction of his neck and shoulder, a gentle bite. "I was lead to believe that if the actions are onesided, it is generally not reciprocated."

"Mnn, something like that," Tony breathed, hesitating just a moment before sliding one of his palms further around Loki's waist, "...I don't know what I'm doing...and that's never a good thing. Usually for myself, but sometimes for others. So...what_ are_ we doing?"

Generally Tony disliked his mouth for running away without him, as it was usually getting him in more trouble than it got him out of, but this was one of the rare days when he hated his inability to stay quiet. He hated it with the whole of the Arc in his chest.

Loki stopped, pulling away a little to stare at the man at his mercy. "If you'd silence your tongue before I do it for you, then you'd find out. But generally, I'd say we're going against all morals and laws of attraction, and quite possibly the laws of our realms, without regard for the Midgardians you call your team."

Tony flushed, simultaneously resisting the urges to roll his hips forward again and to bite out something bitter and mood-ruining. Not that his conversationalist attitude was doing much better. "That's not what I meant...I can't shut up for the life of me. If I have something to say, it just comes out. And right now, I think we need to talk, anway."

Loki smirked, edging his knee a little higher between the mortal's thighs. "The infamous deviant Tony Stark wanting to take things slow? I must be something special. I feel so...privelaged."

"Well I-ngh, stop that..." He cut himself off with a pant as Loki's cold hands slid up his shirt. He was about to just give up when he felt those nimble fingers tracing the outline of the Arc. He moved his hands slide between the non-existent gap of their chests, pressing. "I mean, you're not exactly common game."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Loki muttered, edging Tony's legs to part with a nudge of his knee.

Tony wasn't sure why, but he found that funny. It was the first thing the Trickster had said that didn't sound Asgardian Fashioned.

"Take it however you want to, but I have questions...I want them, mm, answered."

"Is this because of who I am, or do you always analyse your conquests as such," Loki asked, not stopping the gentle rotation of his hips against Tony's. His elegant hands were smoothing down the human's sides as he spoke.

"Oh, it's not me, it's definitely you," Tony replied, and for some reason, Loki tensed.

_My body is not my own._

Tony resisted the urge to beat his head against the wall, and took the opportunity to be heard. "You're Loki, the God of Mischief, why the hell should I trust you?"

"We've shared this exchange," Loki replied, sounding a little indignant, leaning away far enough for Tony to properly see his face. "I'm not asking you to trust me."

"Look, I know I don't understand how things work on Asgard, but usually you trust someone before you let them in your pants." He put a little more pressure on the hands pushing at Loki's chest. "Now I've had enough walks of shame in my life to know when I'm gonna regret something, and if you don't let me say what I have to, and you just steamroll ahead, I know this is gonna be the worst mistake of my life."

He actually fell forward off the wall a little bit when Loki suddenly disappeared from the room. He stumbled, catching himself, no longer pinned with the weight of another body. He blinked owlishly for a few seconds, his mortal brain catching up to speed with the immortal's disappearance.

When he registered that Loki wasn't in the room anymore, he growled.

"Great, fan-_fucking_-tastic. Nice talking to ya!" He shouted at no one, stroking down his shirt to straighten it. When the hope for a reply melted away, he irritably approached the bar, intending to deplete his alcoholic stock. "Proud motherfucker..."

A weight crashed against his spine, sending him sprawling half over the counter top. His hand that had been extended to grab the neck of the bottle then pushed it over the edge, the glass smattering and no doubt wasting the liquor. Hands on the bench top, the edge digging harshly into his gut, Tony felt that pit of fear re-opening in a second flat.

When Loki chuckled against the nape of his neck, that sensitive spot that nobody had ever found before, it began to close over again, even if only just a little.

"You fall too easily for my trickery," Loki teased, those cold hands finding their way back up Tony's shirt. The man shuddered against him, pressing back in hopes of getting away from the bench that was jabbing into him. Loki eased up on his back, but kept him pinned firm against the stable surface. "No, Man of Iron, your prying does not dissuade me."

One hand gave up the task of teasing Tony's chest, slipping around to the front of his jeans, tugging at the button with ease. "Something tells me you haven't heard a damn thing I've said," Tony protested, but the words were weak carried on the groan of his voice.

"I was attentive," Loki disagreed, "I just couldn't care less."

"That's too bad. I'm a fucking Messiah, my words may as well be gospel."

The sound of Tony's zip slowly being released, tooth by tooth, filled the man's body with warm anticipation. His fingers curled on the benchtop, shoulders arching back. Loki's mouth was hot on the base of his neck, contrasting the cool skin of his still wandering fingertips, now circling one of his taut nipples.

"What, no candles and rosepetals? I disapprove."

"Do you now..." Loki sounded more like he was about to laugh again than actually curious. Tony knew the God saw right through him, knew that the mortal was feeling uncomfortable and was rambling with reason. The hand that had opened his jeans was now snaking its way through the last layer of clothing, over hot, flushed skin.

Tony felt weirdly embarrassed. He wasn't sure if it was becaue he was vulnerable again, with a God behind him and touching him, or because Loki was touching him_ again_. They were out in the open, late daylight screaming harsh through the oversized wall of glass he called windows. Tony couldn't turn around and reciprocate, or at the very least be an active participant. He felt helplessly abused.

"You know," he began, before a hiss broke through his teeth. The sensations of Loki grabbing his arousal firmly, restricted by fabric and the bench, were sharp and unexpected, rattling him. It shouldn't feel this good. "O-on the subject of...reciprocation..." stilted pants broke his sentence into tiny, worthless pieces, and he could feel the Trickster's smirk against the prickling hairs on the back of his neck, "you should really let...let me...turn around."

_I don't even know what I'm rambling about..._

"Anthony, feel free to be silent whenever it suits you."

If Loki really wanted him to shut up, his hand wasn't doing a faithful job of showing it.

.:.

* * *

**A/N:** Sorry that this update is a few days later than expected. I got stuck on the last scene.

I just broke it off as kindly as possible yesterday with my long-term boyfriend, and he's not handling it too well, as to be expected. He nearly broke his fist on a brick wall today, and I must say it's the most frightened I've been in a long time - he's never been this angry. But I just got off the phone after a two hour long talk with him, and he's feeling much better about me and everything that's happened now that he knows why I ended it. It was for both of us. I simply was not the girl for him, we're too young to decide our lives now, and we weren't as happy as we thought we were.

Sorry for the rant, but I felt the need to explain my situation, in case the updates are a little dogged for a while.

Love, MK

_Judgement: Wounds from the past we never let heal, sins we've committed we've refused to forgive, bad habits that we haven't the courage to lose. Can't hide any longer._


	6. I: Hanged Man

**Card of Fools**

**VI  
**_Hanged Man_

.:.  
'

0:13

_Fifty five, fifty six, fifty seven,_ he counted, tapping his finger against the thick hide of his lounge in time, _fifty eight, fifty nine, sixty._

0:14

Realization clicked over with the digital flicker of passing minutes, noting that he'd been lying perfectly still and counting down for twenty-three minutes. His arm was deadened from lying on it, and it occurred to him that his feet were cold and tucking them into the leather crease between the seat and the couch back wouldn't help. Nonetheless, he was too comfortable to move.

_Sixty seconds in a minute. Hundred and twenty in two. Quadriple that is four eighty. Triple that and take away a minute. One thousand five hundred and sixty seconds,_ he mused, calculating in his head for no reason other than it was comforting. It was an absent habit, but soothing._ Numbers I understand._

It was oddly detaching, lying prone and literally passing time. For once, his mind was silent while he was alone. Usually he spent times like this down in his workshop, maddeningly inventing, nurturing creation in his hands. If he was feeling particularly despondent, he'd go downtown and find a lady, or he'd fly around in his suit for hours.

It should probably be odd to him that, despite the late hour, there wasn't a single light on in the entire floor, aside from the small digital clock on the stereo system that he'd been watching diligently for near a half hour. He was high enough up in the building, which had been layered with soundproofing because he could afford it, so that he couldn't hear a damn thing from the street below. There was only the hum of the fridge that he alternatively heard and didn't, the white noise droning on regardless of whether or not he paid any mind to it. Silence. _Life._

If it weren't for his eyes being wide open, even Tony himself would think himself to be asleep...or dead.

There wasn't an ounce of the restless agitation that coursed through his body and forced him on his feet. There wasn't a single whirring of caffienated thoughts, or the thrum of alcohol like batteries in his blood.

There was just him and his digits, meaningless calculations and moments ticking on one after the next.

Tony Stark was one for making the most of every spare minute he had in his life. Why was he lying on his couch, tapping at his Arc in time with his counting, staring at green numbers in the dark as though they held all of life's answers in their glaring simplicity?

_Loki._

Loki was why.

He groaned in complaint toward himself when he unexpectedly threw his legs over the edge of the couch, forcing himself sit up to avoid rolling off onto the floor. Just thinking the God's name made him restless again. Not that he wasn't appreciative of the unexpected jumpstart, but his body was aching and he didn't know why.

He was sure it wasn't because of the small 'shut down' he'd endured, and it certainly wasn't because he'd possibly exerted himself a few days ago doing something strenuous. Perhaps it was stress. Perhaps it was because he finally let himself relax, and was just now realizing how_ tired_ he really was.

Lifting his body off the lounge was more of an effort than the action was worth, and the disorientated feeling that followed made him wish he'd just stayed put. Driving him across the room wasn't, for once, the desire to torture his liver with substance abuse. It was the row of windows that had long been replaced, where the lights from the cityscape were being made clearer and glowy through the transparent wall of glass.

Now that he wasn't lying in such a way that the light from his Arc was hidden, the blue glow filtered through the cotton of his shirt, caught in the reflection as he approached. He stopped just long enough to admire the light, aware of how heavy the component in his chest actually felt.

Tracing his hand around the circle of light, he wondered.

Early afternoon, he'd been bent over his kitchen counter by a dangerous otherworldly criminal, and he hadn't even pretended to fight off the advance. Out of nerves, he'd prattled on about things that came to mind, trying to make his usual snark in between, but in the end, he'd stopped talking and started moaning.

Just the way Loki wanted him to.

Then, without waiting for Tony to come down off his euphoric high, and without waiting for any uttering of gratefulness, or any sort of returned favour, the diety had simply disappeared. Just like the last time, he'd left and hadn't taken anything for himself.

_Is it wrong of me to have wanted Loki to_- Tony literally slapped himself, albeit lightly, across the cheek. He'd hesitated in the way one would before striking oneself, but the tap was sharp enough to cause a slight sting, waking him up._ Shut the fuck up, Tony, before you start thinking stupidly, too._

"It's not like I can just get over being thrown out of a god damn window," he told himself, tracing a hand over the glass, where he remembered his spine striking the pane. He remembered the spidering cracks crumbling under the force of the throw.

They'd been a fair ways back into the room, and Loki had held him by one hand at his neck, fingers curling over the ridged bones above, holding him submissive and knowing that the God need only squeeze and his jaw would snap and windpipe crumple. That same single hand that had thrown him across the room. The same hand that had been wrapped around his unlikely arousal rather than his throat, bringing him pleasure rather than pain.

"How can my life get any stranger?" he asked himself, before unwittingly answering.

_I could fall in love, I guess._ He snorted, dropping to sit cross-legged on the floor, staring at the glittering buildings in the distance. _Yeah, that'd be the pinnacle of unnatural._ He rubbed hard at his brow, deciding that he was feeling particularly truthful, and watched the 'shooting star' airplane that stroked a path across the smoggy sky.

_I've always wanted things I could have, because I knew I could have them. My life became as shallow as my ambitions. I did everything for myself, and even things I thought I was doing for others I only did because I felt so guilty at being selfish that I was trying to lessen the feeling. So now, I'm being selfish and wanting what I can't have, because they're not freely given and I have to work for them. Somehow it's even less honourable, as though everything else just wasn't enough...how ironic._

The fridge whirred on but the pattern changed, becoming louder as the cooling system noisily switching on again. He twitched at the suddenness of the noise, turning his head toward the appliance, glaring at the interruption of his thoughts. The room was still pitch, and he couldn't see a damn thing aside from the misty reflection of the Arc from the corner of his eye. Everything was so loud, suddenly, particularly the resounding voice of his AI.

"Sir," Jarvis began, attempting for his attention, "you have a call. Bruce is waiting on line one."

Considering that it was now well into the second half of the hour past midnight, his friend wouldn't be calling for no reason. He picked himself up from the floor. "Did he say it was urgent?"

"No, he didn't. The patterns of his voice wouldn't suggest panic, either, but he insists you put him through, providing you are conscious."

"Well, you heard the big man, hook us up."

"Of course, Sir."

He stared through the window as Banner's voice filtered through the cold room. "Tony, you're still awake I see."

"Of course," he replied, wondering if he'd parroted his AI. He shrugged the thought of. "'Sup, big man, everything cool?"

"Well, if you count Steve's whining all evening."

Tony forced a laugh, proud to hear that it hadn't sounded artificial at all. "Bitching's probably more like it. Is it about me?"

"Well, first it was about the contraptions I left lying around, then he moved on to how you always left fancy technology all over the place, and _then_ he was whining about you."

"Sucks to be you," Tony snickered. His arms had prickled with the cold. He leaned closer to the window, breathing hot and long, watching a patch of condensation blossom from the steam.

"Thanks for the sympathy," Banner retorted. There was a slight hitch as he paused, and Tony waited, drawing a pattern in the transluscent circle in front of him. It turned out looking an awful lot like his Arc Reactor by the time he'd finished. "Alright, Tony, what's going on?"

"Whaddaya wanna know?"

"Look, I know I may not be your first choice of confidant, but I know that something is seriously going on over there. You'd be griping at everyone if it was something trivial. I know you. I know that the second it's something severe, you shut up about it. Is it the Arc Reactor?"

Tony's eye twitched and he swiped his hand over the fading picture, erasing it. There was still a damp smudge that dried slowly a few seconds later. "No," he replied coldly.

Banner didn't say anything else for a few seconds. The chill in the room became almost suffocating in that time. He heard Banner suck in a breath, ready to say something, when words erupted from his mouth.

"Jarvis, check the fucking thermostat! How many times do I have to tell you!"

Banner stayed silent, listening to Stark's outburst as he and the AI conversed like a married couple.

"Sir, an outside source keeps interfering with the internal room temperature. It is difficult to get accurate readings of the building."

"What are...you know what, I'll check it my fucking self. I'm sick of this bullshit."

Forgetting about his pending conversation with his fellow scientist for the moment, he traipsed down the hall, where a small silvery box with a digital touch-sensitive screen was mounted at the very end. The numbers and figures seemed correct, so it had to be the wiring. How else would his building get so cold if the heaters were set on schedule?

"Are you satisfied, Sir?"

"Don't sass me, Jarvis, I'm not in the mood."

"Of course you're not, Sir."

"Watch yourself."

It was then he seemed to recall his patient friend still waiting on the open line. He was a little embarrassed at having the other man hear his little tantrum about the cold in his appartment, but he forced himself to remain neutral as he revived the conversation. Strangely, the room seemed a little less icy than before.

"Well shit, sorry bout that," he said lightly, "I was just worried that if my nipples got any harder, they'd tear a hole through my shirt."

Banner only laughed. "That's fine."

"What were you going to say?"

Banner paused again, and for a moment Tony was about to cross his fingers, hoping it wouldn't be something dire or another delicate question. Instead, Bruce surprised him and said "go to bed, Stark, you need sleep just like every other humanoid."

"_Natasha_ doesn't need sleep," he said childishly.

"Natasha sleeps with her eyes open," Bruce retorted, "your argument is invalid. Go to bed."

"Only if you come with me."

The room prickled with icy needles.

"_Goodnight_ Tony."

"'night, doc."

The line and the completely pointless phone-call were cut, and Tony half expected some comment from his moody AI, relieved when he received none. He decided he'd just have a shower and go lie down, feeling completely unsatisfied with his day.

He'd kicked out his friends, then tried and failed to pick a fight with the Trickster, who had ended up leaving him feeling numb after yet another unspeakable encounter. He'd spent his entire evening staring emptily at his tablet and watching the minutes pass on his digital clock, possibly dozing off here or there – it was impossible to really tell.

Now, he'd realized absolutely nothing had come from it, other than realizing how indefinitely messed up he was about everything.

How pointless.

"Jarvis," he called out, closing the bathroom door behind himself, "I feel like a damn woman. I don't know what I want anymore."

"Philanthropy not cutting it, Sir?"

"See, _this_ is why I've been ignoring you these past few weeks. You _are_ a woman. I should have given you Keira Knightley's voice."

"You know what they say, Sir, the creation is but a reflection of the creator."

Tony narrowed his eyes, "you'd better stop sniping at me or I'll replace you with a new, less broody AI, and turn_ you_ into a personalised toaster."

"I'd burn your toast."

"You'd what?" he asked, staring up at the ceiling incredulously.

"I'd respectfully burn your toast, Sir."

Tony laughed, pulling off the last of his clothes, turning the handles of the shower and waiting a moments. "You hold grudges like a woman, Jay."

"You have my permission to call me 'mother'."

"Don't tempt me," he chuckled, testing the water with his foot, satsified with it. "Did someone tamper with you? You've not been this chatty in ages."

"Neither have you, Sir."

And wasn't_ that_ a fact.

.:.

* * *

There were a lot of strange sights Tony had woken up to. Some of them had been the faces of his bedfellows, others had been simply his surroundings, of which were so far displaced from the last memories he could find that he was convinced Vodka really was a means of teleportation. Once he'd woken to Rhodey sleeping soundly next to him, and after some paralyzed moments, realized they still had their pants on and their friendship was still all good.

This, however, was right up there. It wasn't the oddest – _being an alcoholic usually came with one or two specific wake-ups that absolutely could not be beaten_ – but it was enough to have him fly up to plaster his back to his headboard with a squawk, dragging up his white sheets to his chest like some modest woman.

Considering it was Thor seated at the end of his bed, covering his Arc was understandable and his manner was forgiveable.

The God was looking a little grimey, his golden hair a little dusty, but his eyes were bright with mirth. He looked a little awkward and unsure, but he was definitely cheery. The only problem was that it was the kind of unwaverable cheery that stayed plastered to your face for long, unbreakable moments of time, and it was definitely not the best thing to see first thing in the morning.

"Uh, dude how long have you been staring at me?"

"Just a few minutes," Thor said, as though it were perfectly fine and not incredibly creepy. He brushed his hands against his tunic, and Tony was actually a little surprised to see that it actually was dust that came off his clothes. "I appologise for my appearance, I had been training with the Warriors Three and forgot to wash up before keeping my promise."

"Your...promise?"

"The vase. I placed it in the same place as the one I broke."

Tony didn't doubt that he meant he'd placed it to the exact millimetre.

"Oh..." the hand with the sheet pinned to his chest loosened. He glanced at the clock, registered that he'd only gotten to sleep about two hours ago, and instantly his eyelids felt as though they were made of stone. "Oh, okay...okay," he repeated, nodding.

Thor raised a brow as he watched Tony slump onto his side, back still pressed to the headboard, eyes half-closed with near sleep. "Come, Stark, let us get breakfast!"

Tony made a pathetic, whimpering sound, attempting to cover his head with the sheet. There was no more noise from the God, and when the man groaned, putting on a little show and sniffling, there was still nothing. He sighed eventually, sliding the cloth away so he was no longer cocooned under it, Tony sat up once more, shaking his head quickly to ward off the edges of sleep.

"Alright, I'm up...I'm up."

There was a tender look on Thor's face, and for a second, it shocked him. "You remind me of my brother when we were younger," Thor said suddenly, and Tony had a feeling he was about to get one of his friend's random Asgard tales. He wasn't wrong. The God had centuries of them to tell. "He'd react the same way when I awoke him early for some adventure. He'd stay up all dark reading, because he knew no one dare bother him at night, then finally drift when the morning broke. I hasseled him about his habits by making sure to awaken him myself."

"Nn...oh? Why'd you do that?" Tony asked, combing back his bed-hair. He knew he had it, too, because he tossed and turned for hours in complete awareness before finally slipping away. His hair nearly defied gravity the mornings following nights like those. He was just lucky that his mussed look was apparently very sexy, because some people couldn't quite pull it off without looking dorky.

Not that he cared if Thor found him sexy. Tony just liked looking sexy in general, and it was definitely a pride thing, because he'd tell people he liked looking good for himself. _Oh yeah, baby, I'm the first person to admit I'm narcissistic.  
_

"I wasn't fond of his reading."

Tony was about to ask more, before he clacked his teeth together hard, recalling Loki's cornering him. The last time Thor had told him about Loki, the God had found out almost immediately and had cornered the mortal, demanding he keep his silence and no longer encourage it.

It struck him then that he'd never actually wondered how Loki knew of their conversation. A slow smirk came to his face, and he crossed his legs, making sure the sheet covered his lap and his legs.

"Oh, was he reading porn or something? Didn't want his virtuous mind to be tainted?"

"He was simply different. He'd stay indoors while the others and I played and trained outside, mere yards away. Sometimes he'd watch us, through the window or from the hall, and sometimes during the colder seasons he'd sit under a tree outside, but he'd never join in with us. He was too absorbed in literature."

Tony frowned, both rejoicing at his plan and feeling conflicted over this story. "So because he was different from you, you mock him?"

"Only in jest," Thor said quickly, "it was others who sneered at him for his talents. I would tease him about his sorcery, but I acknowledge that he has saved our lives in battle many a time with his magic. I respected his art when we grew, though I can't be sure I've ever told him that, and eventually I left him to read. Ah, forgive me, I seem to have gotten off track."

Tony shrugged, rubbing at his wrist absently. In his haste to follow through with his plan, he'd not considered how awkward it'd be sitting naked with a God on his bed, only covered by a sheet._ Typical._

"As I was saying, he did the same as you. He would huddle under his covers, as though I brought the sun into the room with me, and he would make endless lamenting sounds before accepting it was futile, and his efforts to dissuade me in turn woke him to the fullest."

Tony chuckled, shaking his head at the surprising comparison between himself and Loki. It was a little unbelievable.

"You only have one brother, right?"

"Yes, just Loki."

"Okay, just making sure."

Hearing the Trickster's name made him wonder if his little test was really worth the risk. Then he remembered Loki's cold touch to his chest, gingerly tracing his Arc with veiled curiosity, and the way the God somehow was able to reach in and pick out the tail-spinning ideas floating about his head, so far at the back of his mind that he rarely even considered them, yet they haunted him.

Somehow, the God just knew him. That had to stand for something, right?

"Are you ready to retrieve breakfast, Anthony?"

"Hows about you let me get dressed before we go?" he said with a 'shooing' motion, wishing it didn't sound so dirty.

_Why did anyone ever let me lose my virginity? I'm forever corrupt._

.:.

* * *

It had been an admittably fun day out, if Tony didn't count the flinching whenever Thor would make a sudden movement in his direction, or sling a large arm over his shoulder, landing that hand of his a little too close to the Arc. The jumpiness faded after the first hour, but it didn't disappear, and Tony regretted that his friend had ever done what he had the day before, even with his intentions as they had been.

And he'd been so sure that Thor might actually be the right person to go to about everything.

Nonetheless, the day was well needed. And if they didn't count having a dozen girls ask for autographs, a few of which smiled prettily at him, and getting interrupted half-way through with Fury and his blasted false alarm that had somehow resulted in Tony snorting a bit of bacon up his nose, it was actually really relaxing.

The bacon-up-the-nose kinda wrecked that because he'd literally spent about ten minutes in the men's room afterwards trying to either blow or snort it out, because yeah, it really was lodged up in there. It was a very disgusting and defacing event, and he was glad Thor had covered for him so that nobody else knew of it. About all that had made it better was remembering the time Pepper had sneezed with a mouthful of coffee which then dripped out of her nose.

It also made him feel like a bit of a dick because he'd teased the hell out of her for weeks, but mostly it made him feel a little better.

Thor had seemed to sense his embarrassment, launching immediately into a tale of his friend Volstagg, a burly redheaded God who had a penchant for eating anything that could be eaten, mentioning a rich celebration that followed some glorious battle. Apparenty the God had been stuffing his face so vigorously that he hadn't noticed Lady Sif call him up to make a speech about his slaying of a beast and saving her life, and had choked on a bone when she'd irritatedly dragged him upright.

Tony was laughing pretty hard at the part about the God's red-face and the painful-looking lump in his throat as he coughed and wheezed in front of a full hall in front of the Asgardian court and warriors. The story was dulled a little when Thor mentioned Loki shrinking the bone with his magic so that Volstagg could swallow it.

These were the people that treated Loki like less, the same people he saved and assisted time and time again without recognition, only to be taunted about his sorcery.

Mentioning Loki only brought him back to the girls that had asked for his autograph on recognising him at their arrival.

They were beautiful, young, and were fluttering their eyelashes at him, swooning and and each filling their heads with hopes that he'd take them sky-high in his suit and think they were the one. He wasn't even the slightest bit interested. He'd looked on at them with an observative eye, measuring their appearance as he'd always shallowly done, but he did no more than sign their phonebooks and he did it without leaving a number beside his loopy scrawl. He'd answered a few trivial questions and accepted their gushing praise with a smirk and kind gratitude. Inside, he was stewing.

He didn't even think he flirted...at all.

That had also dampened his mood. However, Thor cheered him up, before claiming his desire to visit Jane not long before lunch. Tony told him to go, then spent a few hours roaming the city. He went shopping for himself, something he rarely ever did, and left each of the stores his postage details so that he wouldn't have to carry anything.

By the time he finally ended up back at the tower, he was exhausted.

Upon reaching the top floor, he fell more than sat on the chair, deflating with a sigh. He actually felt good.

"Fresh city air must have cleared my head a little," he told himself, yanking himself forward just to pull off his shoes. It was a stiff process, but his feet thanked him proffusely with pleasant aching as he put them up on the couch and stretched out lazily.

He hadn't even been lying there, trying to count the fibres on the white rug beneath the feet of the couch, for five whole minutes. Boots and a quiet gait crossed the marble floors, and Tony met the cold fire eyes of Loki, who was standing a few metres away, staring accusingly at him.

_Well...at least the plan worked._

.:.

* * *

A/N: A little shorter than I'd thought, but not a bad length. I had to cut it off there, because the end scene continues at the beginning of next chapter and this was the only place I could cut it off at. I wanted to write a bit of a more light-hearted chapter, and I think I succeeded. It'll be diving back into the angst next time, though.  
I feel like I have so much free time to write, but I always get sucked into the cycle of reading and putting off my updates. This should have been finished a day or two ago.  
Anyway, the updates will be a day or so longer between than they had been, now that I'm writing most chapters from scratch rather than just editing and adding to what I already had. I also have to update a story for another character before I continue on with this one, but don't fret that I'm losing interest (they're having a miniature panic attack over there thinking I've given up).

I figured you all know this already, but Tom Hiddleston has the most beautiful smile. I'm such a sucker for smiles.

Hanged Man: Physical restriction yet freedom of the mind. Caught between two opposites and a time of suspension, where your feet aren't on the ground.


	7. II: Tower

**Card Of Fools  
**

**_VII_  
**_Tower_

.:.  
'

_Shit, he looks pissed._

Tony had scrambled to his feet, consciously running his now clammy palms over his slacks when the God's eyes didn't once leave him. The look Loki was giving him made him nervous, and all his fear of this creature was sharply remembered. It seemed instincts toward the immortal had been waning, probably due to the reoccurring occasions where there was no violence between them, when there had been only ambiguous conversation and the delicate balance of early intimacy.

Now though, this was the reason he needed to get to the bottom of what was going on. He couldn't go on worrying about whether or not he'd do something to warrant execution.

"I told you, quite kindly if I recall, that you must discontinue your curious prying. One simple request, and yet you refuse me."

"Well," Tony started, running purely on false courage, "it's not like you're giving me what I want, either."

Loki's gaze narrowed, growing colder and harder and if possible even more vicious. "You are over-confident and prideful, Stark."

The way his last name used rather than his given, and the caustic way it'd been said, gave him a gut feeling that maybe he should back down now. Exactly the reason why he couldn't.

"Well, I'm pretty fucking terrified right now, actually" Tony muttered, and if his words were a little fast and held a quiver of fear, well, it only added to his point. "And that's exactly why I provoked you."

Loki's unfeeling mask slipped a little, his chin jutting out as he stared down the man curiously now. "You ignored my request on purpose."

"Yeah. Worked pretty good, I'd say. Now, would you calm the fuck down and stop looking like you're gonna tear my guts out?"

Loki smirked. "I suppose I can save tearing your guts out for later."

_He's just messing with me,_ Tony told himself, knowing that tone of voice anywhere. Still, a shudder rolled down his spine notch by notch, and he really wished the God wouldn't say things like that. He ignored the little alarm bells of self preservation ringing in the back of his head. _Yeah, he's totally kidding._

"What was it you wanted from me, then," Loki asked, looking confident and smug, like he'd planned on this. Tony watched, unable to help his brow from arching at the way the Trickster took a purposeful step closer, the God's hand lifting to the clasp by his own throat, and finally, he was able to get a good look at the deity.

The leather and some other fine material were a rich and definite statement toward the warrior prince he was. The deep emerald green that lined the leather coat and peaked out from under it, showing the silver-embroided edge of the tunic hidden underneath, was an almost perfect match to his eyes. There were silver scale-shaped plates of varying sizes sewn into his clothes like thin armour, and they caught the light as sequins would. Tony didn't know much about Asgardian metals, but he was certain that even though they appeared more for looks, they'd be effective. Fastening the high collar that covered most of his throat, the fancy silver clasp he was reaching for was a pattern of snakes rolling around one another.

As it came undone, the collar falling loose and exposing the green satin-like material on the inside, it framed that long, alabaster throat. Tony swallowed.

He'd never had a good look at Loki before, and he was by no means feminine, but there was a delicate quality to him that Thor didn't have. He had sharp, high cheeks, and his lips were thin and pale. Those eyes were so sharp and clear they reminded Tony of cats and snakes, and he found that strangely ironic. Ageless skin, milky and marble-esque, and he knew from experience that those large hands were slender and soft, and strangely cold.

Tony appreciated aesthetics, and he'd long been shallow enough to define the company he kept by appearance. He knew himself to be handsome, and his charm, his last name, and his wallet made up for all the rest. He'd never felt the need to surround himself in ugly people to look and feel better. Rather, the more beautiful people he had around him, the richer his eyes felt.

Right now, though, he'd never seen something as beautiful as the royal God now exposing his neck to him. He wasn't ignorant due to his times, he appreciated his history, and that was an invitation for so much that there weren't words to express. He knew from his studies of culture, the less flesh a person showed, the more it stood for when they allowed it to your eyes. Loki was making himself seem vulnerable, but Tony knew for a fact he really wasn't.

He hadn't been paying close enough attention, because Loki's breath was brushing his face. When he looked up, meeting the immortal's eyes just long enough to see them near glowing with something, he no longer knew what was happening.

A cold, firm hand was by his throat, not grabbing it but tilting his chin up, a gesture he easily allowed. When he felt Loki's mouth, steadily growing familiar to his skin, brush the nerves by his ear, he shuddered and tore away.

"Stop."

Tony had his back to the God, palms over his eyes, refusing to let himself turn and look. He had no idea what Loki would do now. _Will he kill me for denying him? Will he leave me alone? Will he just take what he wants? What _does_ he want?_

When Loki had yet to speak or touch him, Tony forced the familiar sick feeling in his gut to abate, his shoulders still firmly squared, sensing Loki was still close. The entire game was in the Trickster's hands, he was simply along for the ride, be it win or lose.

"Anthony," Loki said quietly, and Tony had never heard the immortal sound like that. He turned around again, brushing his hands through his hair and locking them behind is head. The God looked a little confused, lips pursed tight, but what shocked Tony most was that there was no anger in his eyes, only uncertainty.

"Loki...that's not what I want."

The Trickster's head cocked to the side, and the corner of his mouth seemed to prick up with the start of a smirk. Tony threw his hands out, a wild gesture as though to keep them at an arms length, even though Loki was too far to touch.

"Look, in case you haven't noticed, I can't exactly teleport after you. My science isn't _that_ impressive yet. I did what I had to, so I think that, rather than have you pissed at me, I have the right to ask you some questions and actually have them answered."

"Oh?" A sinking feeling punctuated by Loki's smirk coming to light sucked immeasurable amounts of his esteem away. He'd be hollowed out by the time this confrontation was over. "And who exactly gave you this right?"

"I'm Tony Stark," he replied, suddenly growing angry, "I do what I want, in case you haven't noticed."

"No you don't," Loki replied breezily, "how can you do what you want when you don't know what you want?" he asked. His hand waved in a simple gesture toward himself, a flicking of his wrist that was princely and threatening all at once. "I know what_ I_ want, but what do _you_ want."

"I...I..."

The way Loki's smug expression became serious flared a bitter anger inside him that he knew only ever appeared when he was wrong. He felt like he'd been grasping uselessly at something that wasn't even there, and making an idiot of himself in the process.

Loki sighed quietly. "My point has efficiently been made."

"So what do you want, then? And please, save being cryptic for some other time."

"Perhaps you won't like what I want from you," Loki answered, and Tony couldn't quite figure out what the look in those eyes entailed. There was only that bland, serious expression, no trace of jest. Tony felt cold. "In fact, I'm sure you wont be pleased at all. But in return, I can save you."

"Save me from what?"

Loki's twisted smile was all wrong.

"Soon enough, Anthony."

The mortal's eyes opened wider and he quickly took a large pace forward, wringing his fingers into the lapels of Loki's coat. He wasn't shoved away, but one of Loki's hands did come to his shoulder, seemingly not sure what to do. "No, don't you leave yet," he hissed, "cut that shit out. I have things I have to say to you."

"Then speak them rather than speak of them."

"How'd you know what Thor and I were talking about."

The calm look in Loki's eyes slipped away, though the rest of his expression remained stone solid nonchalant. "I'm a God."

"_Thor's_ a God. He doesn't even know you've been here at all."

"I doubt that," Loki answered strongly, "he has been around me for centuries, he'd know the scent of my magic anywhere. He wouldn't tell you that I've been here, not if it risked posing more of a threat toward me before he can drag me back to Asgard.

"Can he sense it on me?"

"It is likely, yes," Loki replied almost bitterly, "why do you think he's been making efforts with you? He's hoping it will lead him to me. Or perhaps he is as stupid as I thought and he is concerned you are under a spell, or that I have some tactical interest in you."

"Do you?"

And that was the question, wasn't it?

Loki only smiled that all-wrong smile widely in response, and the doubt that had started to mount within Tony doubled.

"You must remember, mortal, that Thor has been my brother for many millennia. You, however, he has known as an ally for how many months? A friend for less, no doubt. At the end of the day, where do you think his loyalties will lie, if I were to suddenly forgive him and embrace him as a brother? Who do you think will win his affection if I were to beg him to side with me at the climax of a battle, or to concede defeat and plead for mercy?"

It sounded almost like a threat to Tony, and he bristled, visibly growing angry. He roughly released Loki's coat, but the grip on his shoulder grew hard before he could pull away.

"You would do well to understand that Thor's most innate of instincts is to protect me. Mortals die every day. Who's to say that a person I kill today wouldn't have died a more painful death tomorrow. Eventually all the humans he saves from me will die, but it is not _my_ intended time. There is a lot to consider here."

"And where exactly to you think _my_ loyalties lie?" Tony asked, not restraining a flinch when Loki's thumb drove into the flesh around the ball of his shoulder. "Tell me, what side to you think I'm on?"

"Your own."

The answer was such an unexpected shock that, when Loki released his shoulder in order to cup his cheek, Tony didn't attempt to pull away. The thumb that had been drilling into the nerves beside his bone was now gently stroking his cheek, and the shape of Loki's eyes had softened finally._ Christ, either he's crazy or I am._

"If you were on their side, you'd have told them about me the moment you knew something was wrong. If you were on my side, you'd have detonated the tower whilst they were sleeping inside. You wouldn't be who you are if you weren't looking out solely for yourself."

"Loki," he whispered, tempted to turn his lips into the God's palm. No one had ever treated him this way, simultaneously cruel and kind, someone willing to put him in his place and who wouldn't burst out into tears because of things he said and did that he couldn't control, simply because they were a part of him.

No one beautiful or powerful had ever chosen him, it had always been the other way around. No one had ever come so close to the truth he himself couldn't face and that others chose to ignore and remain oblivious to.

He wanted to pull the God close and push him away, he wanted to tell him to stay and scream at him to leave and never come back. He wanted to kill him with his bare hands and let him escape without saying a word to anyone.

"Loki," he whispered again, this time quieter, "how did you really know what Thor told me?"

_When in doubt, get sidetracked._

Loki smirked. "Let me see, how did I know...hmm...oh, I remember," he moved the hand that was still pressed to Tony's cheek to lay his forefinger over the mortal's lips. "Mind your own, Anthony."

Tony was proud that he didn't stumble this time when the God pulled away. He watched Loki stalk toward the windows, blinking and shaking his head at the back of the immortal's form. "Wait, so that's it? You're just gonna take off now?"

Loki froze, turning his head to look over his shoulder. He chuckled, amused. "Do you wish for me to stay?"

"I don't know," he shrugged, shoulders slumping low. It was the complete honest truth, he hadn't even needed to think about that. He really didn't know if he wanted Loki to stay. While he wanted the God to remain with him and to feel that gentle touch on his cheek again, he wanted to send the deity far away until he could figure himself out. His brain was always static whenever Loki was around.

"Well," Loki said, cocking his head to the side, and if Tony didn't know that Loki was set on being evil and causing destruction, he'd have thought the look was near innocent, "at least we're on the same page now. I don't particularly know if I want to stay, either."

"Bored already?" Tony mumbled, pretending for the moment that it didn't sound insecure.

Loki gave him a knowing look. "No, but I fear that it has become painfully obvious that I have outstayed my welcome."

"It's never bothered you before."

Loki ignored the comment, apparently, because he just smirked and lowered his eyes to the floor, bowing very slightly at the waist. "Another time, Anthony."

The moment Loki vanished from sight, a gentle green mist swirling like smoke tendrils in the air, Tony wished he'd asked the God to stay.

.:.

* * *

Tony had fallen asleep on the floor, of all places. He'd lain down on the faux fur rug, running his fingers through the fibres, unwilling to get up and move, even to get a drink. He'd not be caught dead sleeping on the ground, but somehow he'd managed to drift off as the sky began to brighten in the colourful hues of the impending sunset.

He was completeley miserable. He'd decided he wanted Loki to say the moment the God had disappeared, and now Loki was gone and so far from his reach that he'd have to wait until the other saw fit to come to him again. It may be hours of waiting, it may be years, and perhaps it would be a lifetime.

Loki could be in a completely different realm at this point, he could be deciding that he could have anyone he wanted, so why should he bother with Tony Stark? Mortal, Midgardian, and everything he didn't need _Tony Stark._

He'd drifted, his dreams barely taking the form of something pleasant, when he heard something slam. It startled him awake, as the last thing he'd remembered was being completely alone, and for a brief moment something in him had soared at the thought of Loki coming back to him.

Then he saw a flash of amber from the corner of his eye and the feeling took a completely unusual turn into disappointment. "Hey, Pep." His voice was as groggy as he sounded.

"Where the hell is everyone? And why are you on the floor?"

"Nice to see you too, Pep."

"_Tony_," she ground out, sounding a tad the side of warning. He remembered, pulling himself from the haze of sleep, how he'd recently broken her heart and felt like slapping a palm to his forehead. Of course she wasn't happy to see him.

"They're...wherever they're living now. And I just happen to find expensive fake fur rugs highly comfortable. Is that a problem?"

"Wait, you're living alone?"

Tony blinked slowly, considering the woman as though he'd never seen Pepper before. "It's only been one night, and I swear I haven't blown anything up yet."

She opened the fridge at the bar, and Tony realized then that that was what she had slammed earlier that had woken him up. She pointed inside, and Tony raised his brow at her in confusion, no idea what exactly she was getting at.

"There's no food in here. Half of the alcohol is gone, and there is no food." She sounded lividly blunt, and Tony wondered what he'd done this time to set her off.

"Well, like I said, it's been one night. I haven't had the chance to go grocery shopping yet."

"Your hallway's filled with a dozen bags of new clothes, because _of course_ you had time to go on a leisurely stroll through the city. but not pick yourself up something to eat."

Tony frowned at her. He noticed that he was still half-sprawled on the floor and forced himself to sit up –_ I really was comfortable_ – and considered her. "Sorry, _mother_, I wasn't aware that I couldn't use my pocket money and shop for myself for once."

She slammed the fridge door shut again, the half-empty bottles inside rattling. "You can't take care of yourself, Anthony. What in the world were they thinking leaving you on your own?"

"For _chrissakes_, woman, I'm nearly _forty_!" he growled, levering himself up onto the lounge behind him with one hand. "It's only been _one night_, are you even listening? And for your information, they didn't leave, I booted them out."

"Why the hell did you do that?" She demanded, flicking ginger hair over her shoulder and storming through the open room toward him, her shiny black heels clicking the path as she came closer.

"Because they treat me like a child in my own home, kinda like what you're doing right now."

"I'm trying to look out for you."

"No, you're trying to keep me under your thumb, just like everyone else. Well guess what, Pep, if I wanna get drunk, I'll get drunk," he stood up, ignoring the way she flinched, pacing her own steps backwards, "If I wanna fly around in my suit all day, then I'll go wherever I want. If I wanna tell people to get out of my building, then I'll tell them to get the fuck out. I can live off a diet of take-out food if I choose to, I can spend all day in my lab when I have nothing better to do, and if I wanna fuck someone, then I will, and neither _you_ nor_ any_ of my impressive list of exes can stop me."

Tony decided that Pepper's hand whipping over his face in a hard slap was partially warranted, but the sting of it in his chest won over the throb of his cheek.

"Don't you talk to me like that, Anthony."

"And that's another thing," Tony grit out, glaring hard at her, watching her eyes trace the bloom of red spreading over his cheek, "if you can talk down to _me,_ then_ I_ sure as hell can talk down to you."

She shook her head in disbelief at him. "You're no better than anyone else."

"No," he agreed, shrugging slightly, "but I'm not less than them, either."

A softer look warred at the corner of her glaring eyes. "So that's what this is about. Who got to you, Tony?"

The deep breath that shook Tony's chest erased the aggression and replaced it with spite. "Someone who_ is_ better than me."

Her lips rolled together, and there was a look in her green eyes that Tony hadn't seen in a long time. She pressed her hand to his cheek, right over where Loki's own hand had been earlier, and took a step closer to him. Rising up on her toes, she brushed her lips gently to his, the way she used to.

It was their little dance. She'd initiate a kiss with no more than gentle pressure, and Tony would take over with a passion, withholding the bruising force he'd always wished to unleash with the reminder that she was precious. Special.

Not anymore. Not to him.

This time, he clasped her face in hard hands, not deepening the kiss so much as grinding his lips against hers. It was desperate contact, but for what Tony didn't know. She breathed in hard through her nose, wrapping her hands like vines around his wrists, and Tony pressed harder for just a moment, before pulling away, tearing his hands from her face and grabbing her shoulders.

He held her as far as he could, hanging his head and staring at the floor by her shoes. Her shoulders shook under his hands.

_I felt nothing._

"T-" she stammered, cutting herself off, but Tony couldn't bring himself to look up at her.

"Pepper, I can't."

"I know, but why not?"

The way her voice was so hurt and breathless made his heart twinge in regret. He'd broken her heart, she had all right to talk to him the way she had. He just gave a subtle shake of his head. "You and I deserve better. I'm not right for you, and you're not right for me."

"How am I not right for you? I'm perfect for you, I...if it's something wrong with me, tell me, I'll change, I can change!"

_She really was completely in love with me._

This only made him feel worse. "It's not you, and it really isn't. I loved you, once, and I love you still, but it's not the same love it used to be. I'm...sorry..."

Pepper was quiet for the longest time, and Tony was so worried for her reaction that he couldn't bare to look up the entire time. Finally, she brought her hands to his arms and shifted them away, speaking only when she was no longer touching him. "I'm resigning..."

Tony nodded quickly, feeling a stinging in the corner of his eyes. "Yeah...yeah that's probably the best move. I'll give you a reference wherever you wanna go."

"It means you'll be completely in charge of Stark Industries again."

"I'll find someone to take over for me. I'm in no shape to run a company."

She gave a forced chuckle. "Well, that's something we can all agree on." He lifted his eyes then. Her depressing expression made him feel like a complete jackass, leaving a sick taste in his mouth about the entire conversation. "Tony, look at yourself. You're not well."

He actually glanced down at himself at that. She moved over to one of the couches, sitting down stiffly.

"I thought it was because of me...us. But, now I don't know. You're tired, and the Tony Stark I knew never slept as much as you do. Jarvis informed me that you haven't been in your lab much lately."

_Because I go fucking crazy in there._

"He also told me you haven't been eating properly, if at all. Your drinking habits are erratic. You look like a mess. You don't even patrol anymore, and you haven't complained once about being taken off the roster."

He blinked owlishly at her. _They took me off the roster?_

"You don't even seem to understand. You're depressed, Tony. You're depressed and apparently nobody knows why. And don't give me that look, Steve called me the other day, he told me everything about the past few weeks."

"What do they want from me?" Tony asked, before he'd even realized he'd said it. She gave him a strangely pitying look, and he didn't like it. "I can't just snap out of it. None of you understand!"

She jolted a little when he raised his voice, flattening out her skirt nervously. He closed his eyes at the change of expression, not sure if the uncertain anxiety was better or worse than the pity.

"I'm fine. I'll handle myself however I have to."

"You're not fine," she murmured, "you're anything but _fine._ I know you better than you know yourself," she told him.

_Yeah, sure,_ he thought, just barely catching the words before he voiced them.

"I have been at your side for years. I know when you're not yourself. Or maybe you're more yourself than you've ever been, I can't tell anymore," she said, as though the second part had been more of a sudden revelation that she planned on musing about further. Tony grit his teeth at the way she spoke about him as though he were some scientific theory to be taken apart and examined.

_Good luck to anyone who tries to figure me out. I confuse the fuck out of myself, I doubt anyone else will be able to do any better._

"Alright," she whispered, "forget about my resignation for now. I'll stay right where I am until you're back on your feet. I don't want you being more stressed out than you need to be. I still care about you." When he gave her no response, and obviously she'd been hoping for some words of reciprocation, or perhaps less of a one-sided conversation, she sighed wearily. She aged ten years in as many seconds. "I'll wait until you're better, as long as you promise me to get better."

"Do you want me to draw up a contract, or should we just cut our palms and shake on it?"

She smiled at his two cents of humour, understanding his need for a distraction. And, just like Loki, she got up and turned to leave, right when he decided he didn't want her to.

"I'll check up on you in a few days. And there better be food in that fridge when I do. You say you can look after yourself, so prove it to all of us that you can."

"You know me, always out to prove people wrong."

It was probably the most terse goodbye they'd ever experienced with each other.

He thought back to what Loki had told him, how he didn't know what he wanted. He'd just told Pepper that he did whatever he wanted whenever, and that she and the others had no business trying to get in the way of that, but in the end, Loki was completely right. Loki was always right.

He didn't have a damn clue what he wanted.

When the apartment was empty and the sun long buried behind the horizon, Tony felt just as he had that night many weeks ago, when he'd stood at the window and realized just how lonely he was.

Just how _alone._

A part of him understood that, with this feeling, the answer to what he desired was right under the surface.

.:.

* * *

**A/N**: I hope this provided a little more insight toward Tony, Loki, and the characters around them. I just want everyone to rest assured that I know exactly where this fic is going to end, and everything until then is the build up toward it. If the characters are acting out-of-character, it is probably important to the story. I just want to clear that up, but I was told something by my father the other day, something indeed quite relevant:  
"You can't accurately understand a book by reading the middle chapter alone, and if you can, then it's not a good book."

Writing this was the only thing that kept me sane this weekend. I wrote a list of the major things stressing me out that need to be knocked over in the next two months, and christ, there's a lot of them, all the way from my speech I have tomorrow (which isn't even written yet) to the Formal for which I don't have my dress, ticket, or a new table away from my ex. I should probably be hyperventilating right now, but I'm surprisingly calm. It hasn't hit me yet that my life is over for the next few weeks.

Thankyou everyone who has been reading this story, I'm so glad so many people are enjoying it or even just following along! You all make it doubly worthwhile to keep writing. Thankyou so much, really!

_Tower: Sudden changes, flashes of insight, and release of tension. Chaotic situation, disillusionment, emotional breakdown, and the tearing down of faiths._

**Love, MK**


	8. II: King Of Swords

**Card Of Fools**

_**VIII  
**King Of Swords**  
**_

.:.  
'

He liked to think himself fashionably late.

"Heads up!" he called out upon arriving at the battle, synthesized voice louder and carrying farther as it was amplified. Steve glanced over his shoulder then ducked, bringing the shield over his head as extra cover. Tony soared barely millimetres above him, diving head-first toward the droid. Its face had been half melted off, probably due to a lightening strike from Thor, and the thing twitched hazily in bare recognition.

It was the final remaining robot, and it seemed worn down from battle, seeing it didn't even recognise the chance to respond before Tony crashed into it. He released the stabalisers in the hands of his suit by corking the energy flow to them, sacrificing himself to a rough landing in order to wrap his arms around their foe.

Tackling it into the windscreen of a vacant taxi, the glass shattering and the hood denting beneath his knees, he crudely pinned the machine. The alarm sounded, as did several others as the force of the landing sent the parked vehical backwards into the row of cars that had been abandoned in haste.

The suit absorbed the shock and Tony was quick to recover, grappling at the exposed wiring beneath the droid's chin and tearing. It's eyes flickered blue then faded, mouth hanging open in a macabre, almost human depiction of death.

"Could've used the help earlier," Clint grunted, slinging his bow over his shoulder. He was favouring his right leg as he approached from where he'd taken shelter behind a side-turned police car. Tony, who was pulling himself out of the crinkled wreck of the car, mused about the days when his feats earned him a cheer rather than bland commentary.

"Thanks," Steve said quietly, giving Tony an awkward half-smile. "That last one was giving us a bit of trouble."

"No problem. Sorry it took a while getting here," Tony answered, the visor of his helmet retracting, his voice humanizing mid-sentence. "I haven't finished repairing the suit. I had to reset my previous model before I could come out here."

It was way too easy for Rhodey to steal the one he had, and the Director had made him wipe the settings to disable all the suits he had out of commission.

Steve scanned him, seemingly just noticing the change in his friend's weapon, recognising the older suit. "Ah," was all he said, slowly, a worry line creasing his brow.

Natasha, who was pressing a hand against her upper arm, a smear of blood barely visible on the skin behind the torn fabric, walked up to them as though nothing was out of place and she wasn't in any pain at all. Tony was envious. All it took was kicking his toe and he was at absolutely anyone's mercy.

"What's taking so long?" she asked then, voicing the question they all wanted to ask. Her mouth was unnaturally dark, teeth gleaming pink, no doubt having copped a hit to the jaw.

"With what?" Tony looked puzzled, distracted by the glimpse of blood in the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her gloved hand before elaborating, returning her palm to the wound on her arm.

"Fixing your suit. Why is it taking so long?"

"Oh," he murmured, turning his eyes to the carnage of metallic limbs. "I just haven't worked on it yet."

Her tongue was running over her blood-stained teeth as she continued to stare at him; Tony could see from the corner of his eye. She wasn't satisfied with the bare minimum responses he was offering. In order to avoid the interrogation, he swung his arms behind his back, turning to his team once more, smiling at them cheekily.

"So before I swooped in to miraculously save your asses, what exactly was happening?"

"First," Clint pointed out, shaking his head, "you only took out one. The _last_ one."

"Second," Natasha interrupted, "you're stalling."

"Curious by nature."

"Cowardly by choice?"

_Ouch,_ he thought,_ not sure I deserved that._

"Fine, whatever. Tell Fury I'll be patching into the conference from my lab." With that, the visor clanked metallically back over his face, a sense of finality in that single action. Thor, who had been silent, gave him a pleading look which he purposely ignored. "Sayonara," he chimed, turning on his heel and taking off, the boosters leaving a small sear on the grount. He made sure to go especially fast just in case someone tried to follow him.

He decided to take a more scenic route, circling the city several times, admittedly treating the buildings like obstacles in a child's playground. Which he probably shouldn't have been doing, because the cold prying from Natasha was swamping the thoughts that should have been on the path ahead. Fazing out visually, he flew with half a mind elsewhere. He probably scared a few cubical workers when he flew particularly close to a sky scraper.

_What the hell is eating at me?_

Perhaps it was the evidently pointless call of concern from Bruce the other night, or the affectionate embrace when he and Natasha said their farewells. Compared to the almost awkward way they held themselves when he arrived, at least. He couldn't tell for sure.

When Tony Stark wasn't sure of something, all kinds of things went wrong.

Deciding that the last close call with a building was warning enough, he made the turn towards his tower.

_Just look at me,_ he thought,_ the second I'm not in control of the game anymore, I forget how to play._

The tower came into sight, and with practiced precision that he barely payed a second thought to, he landed, the tension he'd picked up from his team still strung tight in his shoulders, his teammate's wary faces plasted on his mind.

.:.

* * *

"And you're live, Stark," Fury's colourfully deep voice finally filtered through the projection he had streaming up from the tablet on his coffee table.

Now that the image wasn't muted anymore, he could hear the background din of Thor and Steve chattering amongst themselves. Bruce, who Tony saw for the first time that day, was busily whispering something to Natasha. Clint was staring right through the projection at him, however, and Tony felt a little perturbed by the archer's focus.

To distract himself, he reached over and grabbed his steaming mug of coffee, not particularly in the mood to endure either the conference without a decent amount of caffiene, or another lecture about his inappropriate alcohol intake. Hence why it was coffee in his hand, not whisky.

It felt better to have at least something between his face and his teammate's scrutiny, even if it was as feeble as a mug. He pressed it to his lower lip, testing the heat, taking a tentative sip before deciding that it was probably still a few minutes short of the perfect temperature.

"Quiet," Fury demanded the others quietly, "now that Stark's delicate tendencies have been catered too," Tony scoffed a little, hiding his smirk behind his mug when Fury's eye flickered over to him in a warning glare, "we can start. Obviously we need to discuss the droids that attacked this afternoon, seeing as their origin was unknown-"

"Japanese," Clint whispered loudly to Thor beside him, "definitely Japanese."

Fury's slow dagger-sharp look silenced the archer. "However, the first issue of discussion is Loki. Odinson, care to start?"

Thor looked pensive, his lips pursed tight in indecision. He gave a rigid nod, chair scraping a little as he pulled it closer to the large table. "My brother is getting stronger. I think that is no secret, but it is something we can no longer deny. The longer he spends on earth, the more his magic adapts to the atmosphere. Magic is a part of his genetic make-up, and without it hindered, he will tire less and heal quicker."

Fury took over, grabbing a file that was placed on the table in front of him and opening it. "That in itself is a problem, but what we should be more concerned about is his motives. His recent attacks have been quite weak and," he paused, flickering a glance at Tony through the projection, "well, dare I say questionable. We need to prepare ourselves."

Gloved hands grabbed a sheet of paper that looked startlingly familiar, depositing it on the tabletop for others to see.

Tony recognised it.

"Hey! That's mine, where the hell'd you get that!"

_Damn,_ he thought, leaning forward in his seat, _they've been siphoning files all this time?_

He hoped they didn't notice the way he instantly paled, a thought occuring to him._ Shit, the security footage..._

Fury ignored his exclamation, though Banner cast him a sympathetic look. "This is our goal. Stark, I want you back on this project. You're relieved from practical duties until progress is made."

"What the hell!" Tony exclaimed, sloshing the coffee over his hand. He hissed, pausing only to place the mug on the ground by his feet, pressing the burn to his mouth.

"Banner and Odinson will assist you when you require it."

The finality in his tone pissed Tony off to lengths he wasn't aware of harbouring toward this man.

The project was something he'd had an inkling toward finishing a few months ago, but had quickly given up. It was more to do with research than using it as a weapon, however, which was half of the entire reason he was so indignant about having it stolen from him.

It was no more than a bunch of half-assed plans to make a counteractor for magic. However, unless Tony could find a way to understand magic completely, there would be no way to continue with it. Thor wasn't like Loki, he didn't have the same properties and he wasn't a sorcerer.

It was no more than an idea.

"I'm not your damn puppet," he seethed, dropping his smarting hand back to his lap. "First of all, don't get me started the serious legal issues here, because I'll definitely be calling my lawyer if I find you stealing anything else from me. Second, you can't just lock me out of my suits – I'm _Ironman_. And third, that was an unfinished project, and I had reasons for abandoning it. The idea is good and all - I mean, it was _my_ idea - but putting it into effect-"

"Stark, shut up and listen. I couldn't care less what's going on over there, or how your freakish mind is coping with it, but your team does. Now they've told me you're unstable, you're unreliable, and they want you to sit out until you sort yourself out. Now I can't suspend you, but I can't have you in the fight if your team doesn't want you there. This is the best solution."

"You can't just bench me! You can put me on a leash if it helps you sleep at night, but I say how long it stretches."

"When you chose to be a part of this, you accepted that this team goes by my rules, and if I say roll over, you're going to roll over, and you're going to lay there until I say so. You-"

The projection flickered, static masking Fury's voice, the faces of his stunned teammates warping. For a few seconds, the projection disappeared, and Tony reached over, tapping his fingertip on the tablet.

A second later it flickered back up.

"Sta-ark!"

"There's interference," Tony mumbled, kicking the leg of the coffee table gently. The projection gave a small jolt at the movement, the director's mouth moving without sound. Tony fiddled with a few settings, leaning as far forward as possible without getting off the couch, until finally the sound crackled back in.

"-ese games! Y-ou know I – time for it – tes – ng - pa-atience Ss-tark!"

"...is it scary that I know exactly what you're saying to me even though I can't hear half of it? Fury, man, you're getting predictable."

"you a-ogant li-"

"Look, I'm not going to lie. I have suspicions that my place is fucking haunted. Tell you what, I'm gonna call Ghostbusters, and I'll get back to you later, sweetheart. Give my love to the kids. Kisses," he pressed the end call setting, and as though the light were being sucked back inside the tablet, the projected screen dissolved.

Tony groaned, slouching back into the couch, feeling strangely like he did when he was a child and his father would chastise him for playing with things that weren't meant to be played with. The feeling came complete with being grounded.

"Well this is nostalgic," he muttered to himself, closing his eyes and smothering his face with his palms. Well, at least now the expressions that had been on his teammates' faces made more sense – they'd tattled and were hopefully feeling really damn guilty about it.

He wasn't sat still for long before Jarvis alerted him of a visitor.

"Sir, Ms Potts requested I inform you of her arrival."

He'd barely slid his hand from his face before her heels clicked their way into the room. She didn't even pause to assess him before making her way over to the fridge by the bar, making good on her promise and checking the innards that were, thankfully, restocked.

"Good boy," she said semi-enthusiastically, still examining the contents, probably for nutritional value. She was obsessive compulsive like that. "You did what I asked."

Tony threw her a winning smile, glad for the distraction. "Do I get a treat?"

She grabbed something from inside the fridge, plastic rustling, and when she turned, she tossed something in his direction, nudging the fridge closed with her hip."Here," she said simply, Tony catching it moments later. It was a couple of purple grapes still stemmed together. He pulled one off, popping it in his mouth gratefully.

He listened to the patter of her heels as she came to his side, a handful of grapes in her own hand, chewing on one thoughtfully. A moment's silence passed before her spectacular observation skills kicked in.

"Tony, coffee mugs go on the coffee table, not on the floor."

He rolled his eyes a little, picking the mug up to humour her. When it clicked that he hadn't said anything in reply, and that she'd made no move to continue the conversation, it struck him as how odd and awkward the entire situation was. Her presence felt stifling.

"I wont be here long," she told him, almost as though to reassure him, "I just have to get your signature on something and I'll leave."

Tony felt guilty, but made no move to amend the broken communication between them, penning his initials absently on the proffered paper. _All business_, he reminded himself_. Just like the team._

.:.

* * *

"I have located the root, Sir."

"Alrighty then," he said with a grunt, wheeling his chair closer to his desk, "Jarvis, send our friends at Shield a little party trick, then patch up the hole and erase the out file."

"Already done, sir."

"Splendid," Tony grinned, kicking his feet up onto the bench, hands linked behind his head. "While we're waiting for the fireworks, better do a check for the leaks."

The room was slightly chillier than he'd hoped, but he didn't bother asking Jarvis to fix the temperature. It was quite pointless, so it seemed, and he'd only be wasting his breath. Instead, he occupied his thoughts with the flashes of graphs and secure folders as Jarvis scanned all the hard-drives in the building.

The task was completed in less than two minutes. He whistled quietly in pride. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why _I'm_ the genius, and Fury is not."

"Very good, Sir."

"Stats, Jarvis. Praise me later. What'd they steal?"

"It appears the new security you created was too difficult for them to break down. Only the single lock files were copied."

"The footage on the personal floors was safe, then?" Tony asked, remembering that he'd specifically barricaded it up for the privacy of his fellow Avengers and himself. He didn't exactly want Fury watching him in the shower, and as tempting as it was to sneak a glance at the recordings from Natasha's rooms, he had a suspicion she'd find out somehow.

"I am certain. Only incomplete files were taken."

Tony thought that made sense, since he only bothered to really lock down things that he thought had any worth to them. Incomplete projects or notes didn't fit in that category unless it was something he shouldn't have been doing.

_And who said having paranoia was a bad thing? When you live with spies and assassins, it's kind of a necessity._

"The root has withdrawn," Jarvis informed him, "sealing has commenced."

The screen looked a little like the matrix as numbers and letters flickered over the blackness, disrupted only by progress scans and alerts. Tony found this amusing, but kept his thoughts to himself. About a minute later, the screen went completely black, then loaded up an inconspicuous blank file.

"Task complete."

"Dip that in hot sauce and suck on it, Director," Tony grinned. He was probably too excited to learn of what his 'party trick' had done to Shield's computers, but what more could the man do to him. Besides, the 'party trick' was just a harmless little prank virus he and Jarvis created, and though he hadn't had cause to test it out yet, he knew it wouldn't do any damage. It was only designed to either piss someone off or scare the crap out of them.

"You seem quite pleased with yourself, Sir."

"Damn right I am. Bastard thinks he can lock me out and treat me like a damn lackey. I'm no man's bitch."

"Sir, incomming call from Shield."

Tony took a moment to school the twitching grin off his face. "Recieve it."

The director's unamused voice flitted through the air. "Very funny, Stark. Ha ha. All our monitors are now displaying a picture of your ugly mug, you vain bastard. Now fix it."

Tony shrugged even though the disembodied voice couldn't see the gesture. "No can do, twenty-four hour defence mechanism. Shouldn't be poking around in things you don't understand, Director Fury Sir. Nothing I can do about it."

"You and I both know that's a lie."

The grin came back full force. "Maybe."

"I will do very painful things to you if you've compromised our work in any way."

"Ooh, kinky."

"Now that we have that settled, I look forward to your progress on the project. Banner will arrive in the morning with the details of this afternoon's conference, and an overview of what we're expecting to come from your research."

The call disconnected, leaving Tony only vaguely satisfied, and mostly disappointed. He kicked his feet back off the desk, leaning forward until his elbows were on the metal top, hiding his face in his hands.

"Well that didn't go quite how I'd hoped," he muttered.

"Forgive me, Sir, but doesn't Director Fury have several other geniuses at his disposal? I'm sure he is quite confident they can remove the virus even if you refuse to."

Tony peeked from behind his hand to give a stupefied glance at the ceiling. "Exactly whose side are you on, you bucket of bolts?"

"You did threaten to turn me into a toaster, Sir."

"Touché." The hairs along the base of his neck prickled with the sensation of being watched, and Tony returned his face into his palms with a long, drawn groan. And here he thought he was beyond that. "Dammit, how the hell am I supposed to work on this project? I can't even sit in my lab for more than ten minutes."

There was no response from his AI. It wasn't unusual; sometimes the computer wasn't certain it was being addressed. It didn't particularly bother him.

What did bother him was the hands that very abruptly closed over his shoulders.

The way he jumped under his skin, jolting straight in the seat with his eyes wide and pulse thrumming with adrenaline, drew an amused chuckle from his 'assailant'.

"You can relax," the smooth voice told him. "My, my...you mortals are quite the fragile race. One loud noise or unexpected touch and your hearts stammer so violently."

Tony unwittingly relaxed when Loki's hands eased their grip, sliding further toward the junction of his neck. His lungs locked defensively for a moment, holding his breath when the God's thumbs began to knead softly through his shirt, followed by pressure from his fingertips.

"What are you doing?"

"Easing your tension," Loki informed him bluntly. There was a lighter air to his voice when he continued, barely masked innuendo, "I'm sure you are already aware, but I am quite skilled with my hands."

"O-oh, yeah...I'm aware."

When a long, stiff moment passed and Tony refused to relax into his seat, forcing his breath and trying to control his racing heartbeat, Loki sighed. "Would I ease your tension more effectively by taking my leave?"

Tony didn't reply straight away. The God's large hands loosened completely against his shoulders, but before they disappeared, the man's own hand shot back, grabbing Loki by one of his thin wrists.

"Wait," Tony murmured, spinning around on the chair, eyes firm on the lower hem of the God's tunic. He fixated on the fabric, worrying his lip between his teeth, not releasing the wrist in his hand until the Trickster grew impatient and tugged it away.

"If you wish me to leave you alone," Loki began carefully. Tony could tell each of his words were chosen meticulously, and while it gave him an odd feeling, he lifted his gaze to the God's face. It, too, was perfectly devoid of any key signs of emotion. "If you want me to depart, you need only state so in this very moment."

"It's been a week..." Tony murmured, and Loki's mouth twitched thinner.

"I am aware. I thought you would appreciate the time to clear your thoughts."

"I thought you weren't coming back," Tony admitted. Feared was more like it. "I'd be a liar if I said you weren't on my mind the whole time."

Loki offered no change in his features, and Tony felt this was a test of sorts. A lump of nerves lodged itself unwelcomely in his throat, taking his attention away from the guilty storm in his stomach. He gave a weary sigh, shaking his head as he tried to find something in the immortal's eyes that would give him the answer he wanted.

"What are we doing, Loki?"

"You're trying to decide if you want me to leave," he replied simply, "I am merely waiting."

Tony shook his head again, dropping his eyes to his lap. He turned his palm upwards, the hand that had caught Loki's cold wrist, hoping the answer would be written in the lines of is palms. It obviously wasn't in the deity's eyes.

"I think I'll just lea-"

"Stay."

Loki seemed to tense all over. "What?"

Tony looked up, boldly meeting the God's frowning gaze, taking a deep breath before firmly repeating himself.

"_Stay._"

.:.

* * *

**A/N:**I'm sorry it took two weeks for an update. Firstly I want to say thankyou for all the well wishes, I'm very grateful that you all understand.

Alright, so I am going to be coming back to the tension with the team and several other things with the next chapter. Any details that are a little vague this chapter should hopefully be elaborated in the next.

Thankyou everyone who has reviewed, faved, and followed this story. The attention it is getting is spectacular - I'd never thought I'd get this many reviews in such a short amount of time!  
If anyone has any ideas for future FrostIron fics, feel free to send them my way. I'm always happy for some fresh inspiration!

_King Of Swords: Having integrity and deserving respect, having or commanding with authority, sound advice, a fair decision or judgement, someone who may be judgemental or compromising. _

**Love, MK**


	9. II: Hermit

**Card Of Fools  
**

**_IX  
_**_Hermit_

.:.  
'

It was obvious simply from the set of Loki's shoulders that he hadn't expected Tony's request. In fact, from the way he stood, half turned as though to leave, staring straight at the mortal's face yet not really seeing him, Tony determined Loki didn't even know what to do with himself.

"I...what?" Loki faltered, a delicate crease in his brow. It was enough for Tony to forget he was merely a mortal in an immortal's presence.

His mouth felt dry. Upon realising this, he knew he'd rather act than speak and cringe at the sound of his own voice cracking. He'd never admit it was also due to the fact his throat felt knotted so tight with strange emotions that he wasn't sure he'd be able to swallow past them.

So, he ignored his subconscious height complex and rose to his feet, still not letting go of the God's wrist.

When Loki only edged his farther foot closer, turning his body to face the human, Tony gave a slight flex of the fingers wrapped around the captured limb. Loki didn't even seem to react to the stiffening grip, probably barely even felt it.

For a still moment, Tony considered the wrist in his hand. His fingers were barely long enough to reach right the way around it, the tips of his middle finger and thumb only just touching. Strange that, when under Tony's warm touch, Loki should feel so fragile and thin when even the God's_ wrists_ were larger than his own.

Everything about Loki's presence was larger than himself. Even the God's wit and superiority complex managed to compete with Tony's, with many millennia behind his intelligence, and he had no doubt their egos would give one another a run for their money.

Ask nearly anyone and they wouldn't even hesitate to admit Tony Stark thought himself a God amongst his own race.

After everything, he still couldn't tell if they were so alike under the skin that they'd clash or mesh.

_Maybe I think I'm better than some people, or at least I used to,_ Tony thought, tracing a line with his eyes up the attached arm, wrapped in leather and muscle, until once again he was at Loki's slender face, _but at the same time, I'm only human._

Loki was still giving him a quizzical frown, and the expressions of his teammates came to mind. The stifled awkwardness between himself and Banner, the air of business that had wrapped itself around Steve, the fickle wedge of ice that had suddenly formed in front of Natasha. Then there was the mutual silence that had befallen he and Clint, both more than happy to ignore one another.

And Thor...

Thor, who had seemed to be the one person in his entire team that may actually be within reaching distance, who had told him more about Loki in five minutes than the enigmatic God had revealed himself in as many weeks, who blindly made a stupid attempt at being wise by reaching for the Arc. Thor, who was only there clinging to whatever could possibly tether him to his brother.

"Who am I supposed to go to..." Tony murmured quietly, circling his thumb over the nape of Loki's wrist, the digit slipping beneath the heavy leather cuff of the Trickster's sleeve. Cold, satin-smooth skin. Despite the temptation to drop his eyes to their hands Tony resisted, locked gazes with the creature stood before him.

"Of what do you speak?"

"Who do I go to about you," Tony murmured again, letting himself deflate slowly, unaware he'd been holding himself so defensively. Loki wouldn't hurt him. "I can't go to SHIELD; those suspicious fuckers would have me locked up like Fort Knox. I can't go to my team, especially not your brother."

Loki winced at the last, expression souring as though he'd tasted something bitter. "You humans ask some very odd questions."

"What I'm trying to say is..." Tony began hurriedly, feeling a slight strain against his hold, "you said yourself – I'm on nobody's side but my own. But now you've got me backed right up. I'm in a corner, with nowhere to go, and I can't turn to anyone but you."

"That was not my intention," Loki said, voice firm, self-assured.

"Wasn't it?"

Tony didn't like the look on Loki's face. He brought his other hand to the God's, clasping their palms together, and at first there was no response in the cold hand, but slowly those willowy fingers wrapped around his own. It was impossible to read the Trickster at the moment.

"I think," Tony whispered, "that even if you didn't intend it, you're glad for it. You like having power over me."

Loki's fingers squeezed tight, just shy of the point of hurting. _And there it is,_ Tony thought, feeling that leap of fear in his gut once more. "You would deny that you have made your own choices?" Loki asked, voice hissing in offence, "I have not forced your hand, nor your tongue. Any assent to my wills has been of your own volition."

"I wasn't saying- shit, Loki, I don't know what I'm doing!" Tony pulled on the hand now gripping his, feeling his fingers going numb with cold, "and I know we've established that already, but I'm not blaming you, I'm blaming myself!"

"I do not read minds, Stark, you had best be meticulous in phrasing your thoughts."

"Yeah, I'd say that much is obvious," he snapped, ripping his hands away when Loki suddenly released it. He glared down at them, curling opposite fingers around his smarting hand, refusing to look at the immortal now watching him.

He jumped when Loki's ivory hands, larger than his own, settled softly over them. "My...tongue has not known many words of amendment, for in my life I fear I have not so much atoned for my wrong doings as merely tolerated the consequences. But I apologise for my hostility...I'm sorry."

Rather than looking up from the hands atop his own, he merely stared at the firm knuckles as though he could find something in Loki's bones that would explain what the immortal's words could not. As though having read his very thoughts, that smooth voice continued tentatively.

"My relations in Asgard were dictated by my mischievous nature. Those around me distrusted me, to the point where everything that inclined toward ill intentions became of my own fault. I soon learned not to yearn for trust, because I often broke what little of it I had earned. Blame that is not my own has long been a burden far too heavy."

"I know you said I don't have to trust you, and I really don't, at all," something in his chest fluttered when Loki's hand closed a little tighter, this time not so much in threat as reassurance. He struggled to force the words out. "I want to, though."

"Pardon?"

The disbelief in Loki's voice broke Tony's unfocussed gaze away from their hands finally. The finely carved emeralds of Loki's eyes glittered unsurely at him.

"I want to trust you. Stop giving me reasons not to. Just...you have to understand that everything I'm supposed to be is supposed to hate everything you stand for. I'm so fucking confused."

A delicate touch slid over his cheek, a soft smile warming those pale lips, and Tony suddenly knew.

He knew why he endured those moments where he thought Loki was going to break his hands or throw him through another window. He knew why he suffered through those terrible sensations sinking low in his gut, writhing with fear and guilt and disappointment. It was so damn obvious.

Loki was everything that everybody else wasn't.

He was simultaneously as cold as he was warm. He'd go from intentionally callous to affectionately gentle in but a beat of his heart. He'd insult with one breath and the words would become sweet with the next.

Each piece of Loki was a fragment of a puzzle that Tony was trying to put together without even realizing, always going back and scavenging for more pieces. There were times when he couldn't even read the God, and other times when he could swear he read something that would only be contradicted the very next moment.

Tony grew bored with most women after only a single night. He could read everything from their desires to their lies to their secret fears in a couple of hours. His brain was always churning, always filing away new information and deciding new factors that related this to that and clicked everything together. His mind was a chemical explosion every waking minute.

Loki, a being that had lived for longer than he could comprehend, who had more life stories than human history itself, who had developed a personality unlike anything ever seen in the realm of Asgard, lit up every cell in Tony's entire body with the need to understand...

Understand why this ethereal being had chosen him, the rusty mortal with a faulty heart and a penchant for putting everything under a proverbial microscope.

"Trust must be earned," Loki tells him, cold fingertips tracing his brow. "We shall speak no more of this until I have earned your trust."

"When will that be?"

"Whenever you remarkably decide to trust me," Loki replied blankly, waving the conversation away with his careful words. Tony bit down on his 'captain obvious' comment. Suddenly, the touch that had been gliding over his face paused at his temple. "You have not slept in two days..."

"How'd you know that?"

Loki's lips pursed down on what Tony thought had been a reply for a second. The God tipped his head a little to the side during his pause, a sincere look in his eyes. "You will sleep until your fellow Avenger arrives in the morning."

_Says you_, Tony had wanted to say, but what he found instead was his teeth locked together, caging his words. He gave a simple nod toward the Trickster, immediately turning toward the cot in his workshop, his feet walking their own enchanted path toward it. The lights flickered out, but Tony's hands moved mechanically even in the dark to pull back the soft blankets, toe off his shoes, and slide underneath.

"Sleep sound, Anthony," Loki breathed gently beside his ear, and tendrils of foggy consciousness twined around him. He turned onto his side, away, and though he knew the very moment Loki left the room, he couldn't help the single thought before he drifted.

_Stay._

.:.

* * *

"Sir, Doctor Banner has just arrived in the Lobby."

Tony groaned piteously into the pillow, clumsily slapping a hand over his uncovered eye as a sliver of light wormed into his vision. He took a moment just to breathe, the scent of lavender cleanser strong under his nose, pleasantly soothing. The sheets were still crisp around him as he turned onto his back, and the way his muscles ached stiffly told him why – he hadn't moved the entire time he'd been unconscious.

"Jarvis, what time is it?" Tony mumbled, his voice slurred and his tongue feeling swollen to the roof of his mouth. He rolled it a little as he listened for his AI's response, unsatisfied with the dull, gross taste.

"Six-eighteen in the morning, Sir," Jarvis happily chimed, and Tony could almost feel the good mood his computer seemed to be in.

"You're awfully chipper," Tony muttered, slinging his forearm over his vision once more.

"Of course, Sir. You attained sufficient hours of sleep. I'm programmed to care for your health."

"Considering the visitor you keep failing to warn me about, you're not doing a bang-up job on that."

"Pardon me, Sir," and Tony thought the bodiless voice sounded slightly affronted, "but to the best of my knowledge, I have alerted you of every guest you have had since I was programmed to."

And _that_ woke him up.

Sobering from the lingering cloud of sleep, Tony cast a glance at the ceiling, the same way everyone else did when addressing his AI. _What the fuck?_

Just as he gathered his thoughts in line to ask, Jarvis piped up again.

"Your coffee is brewed, and Doctor Banner has arrived at the common floor."

"Jarvis, what would ever become of me if I didn't have you around to care for me?"

"Without me, there wouldn't be a 'you', Sir."

Tony snorted. "True that."

Dredging up the energy to face his estranged teammate before he had a meltdown due to his host not punctually arriving to welcome him into the building, Tony managed to slide his feet off the edge of the cot. After clambering to slide his shoes on, not willing to touch the cold marble floor, and reassuring himself that yes, he was fully dressed, because once again he'd managed to have a comfortable sleep in jeans and a band shirt, he hastily crossed the workshop to his awaiting pot of coffee.

"Oh, and Jarvis?"

"Sir?"

"You and me are gonna have a talk when Brucey leaves."

.:.

* * *

"Tony!" Bruce exhaled his name, a look of pure relief on his face, hands sliding out of his hair the moment the engineer came into view. Tony, brain still feeling particularly muddy due to one coffee and a lack of his usual wake-up routine, barely waved in the other man's direction, sculling the last of the contents in his mug.

He was in the middle of seeking out a refill when a sharp punch to his shoulder woke him up fully to the presence of his company.

"_Ow,_ watch the merchandise!" he whined, pressing his palm to the sore spot of flesh.

"Don't do that to me again," Bruce warned, voice strangely low. A pinch of ill-placed fear sent his hands up into the space between them in surrender, mug waving loosely, thankfully now empty.

"Woah, Brucey, _breathe_. Remember your meditation, you _are_ the rock. _Be_ the rock. Goosefrabah."

"Cut the crap, Tony. I was worried about you all night, and then there was no sign of you when I got here-"

"To be fair," Tony cut in, because he could hear the rumble of the other man's voice, and while he wasn't particularly great at tempering the 'Other Guy's appearances, he knew there were times when his rushed bullshit explanations were necessary. "I wasn't exactly expecting to have to get up this early." Of course, his caffeine was lacking, so it wasn't his fault if there was more emphasis on the 'bullshit' part than usual.

"I'm talking about the conference. I'm talking about Jarvis not telling me you were alright. I'm talking about the way you just waltzed out here like nothing's wrong, like you haven't been acting completely unlike yourself for a month!"

"Deep breaths, man. You can chew me out later. I just refurnished this place like three months ago, and my back's kinda to a wall of glass that I'm already plenty acquainted with, thankyou very much." The way Bruce just breathed heavily through his nose and glared at him wasn't quite satisfying. Tony sighed, putting his free hand on the other man's shoulder. "Happy place, Bruce,_ happy_ place."

"With_ you_ around? Impossible," Bruce muttered but grudgingly lowered his eyes, shoulders losing a little of their tension. Tony resisted the laugh that threatened the calm easing into the Doctor.

After half a minute of standing there, gently squeezing Banner's shoulder and waiting for him to relax, Tony figured it was safe enough to revive his plans for seeking out more coffee.

"There, that's better. Want a pick-me-up?" he asked, giving Bruce's shoulder a gentle encouraging slap before turning around and continuing his trek to the bar. There was a soft groan from his companion.

"Tony, it's half-past six."

"Exactly," Tony replied, manually flicking on the coffee brewer. At Bruce's slow blinking when he turned to look, gaze flickering between the brewer and the restocked rack of dark bottles, it finally clicked in and he gave a short laugh. "Oh come off it; I'm not that bad, am I?"

Bruce just lifted a brow at him and Tony knew the answer before he asked the question, so there wasn't any need for a response. He cleared his throat and sought out another mug behind the island bar.

"So..." Tony trailed off, not quite sure what so say to part the tension between them.

Bruce took his request to delay the lecturing seriously. "What happened yesterday, Tony?"

"Interference," he shrugged.

"In Stark Tower?"

Tony shrugged. "It happens, I guess. Didn't read to much into it."

"Well you should. What the hell happened to you?" Bruce was beside him now, a sincere tilt to his brow. "The Tony Stark I knew took everything apart piece by piece, he didn't shrug things off. He had to be dragged out of his lab, he didn't avoid it like it was full of bad memories. You've been playing off Loki sparing you like it's nothing to worry about, you don't talk to anyone, you sleep all the time, you barely eat...what the hell happened?"

Tony's frown slowly melted away, the click of the brewer turning off. He turned to pour both the mugs. "Sugar?" he asked.

"God _dammit_, Tony!"

He slammed the jug down, mugs rattling. "Well what do you want me to say? Huh?" Tony rounded on Bruce, forgetting all pretences he'd held against arguing with the man, concerns about the 'Other Guy' all but disappeared completely.

"I want you to admit you have a problem."

"What problem? Tell me what it is and I'll admit it, if that's what you want to hear. Go on."

Bruce was shaking his head, a look of constrained anger being slowly taken over by one of disbelief. Barely five minutes and already everything was falling to pieces. If anything, Bruce looked resigned from the argument, and something about that just wasn't right. They shouldn't be used to the idea of their team falling apart.

They shouldn't be used to the idea of _him_ falling apart.

"Whatever," Tony muttered, taking his coffee completely black and leaving Banner's on the counter for the man to finish preparing himself. He headed toward the row of lounges, seeing a couple of files and a briefcase resting on the coffee table that no doubt belonged to his teammate. "Let's just get this over with so you can go home."

He didn't see the disappointment on Bruce's face, but he knew it was there. He had a sixth sense about letting people down.

.:.

* * *

After near an hour, Bruce was glad to find Tony seemed to relax and completely forget about their small spat. They'd moved beyond the conference – Tony seemed completely uninterested in the droids now that he'd been told he wasn't to join in on the fights. He also thoroughly avoided the conversation Bruce tried to initiate about how he was feeling toward Fury and the team and the new project he'd been assigned to.

Talking about the new project had been a little tense, and Bruce knew without a doubt that the engineer wasn't at all happy with being on the sidelines, but he was a determined man. He wanted Tony to understand they still had their friendship, if not their team.

"So how are you going to study magic if you aren't allowed on the field?" Bruce asked, not even realizing how confused he'd sounded until Tony had given him that look. It was the look that he'd given Bruce many times, one of complete astounded glee. It was a look Tony gave him whenever he was in shock at actually being understood.

"Exactly!" Tony had exclaimed, shaking his head as though everyone else in the world aside from the two of them were a race of complete benign idiots. As soon as Tony launched into his long, winding complaint about Fury's stupid reasoning and how useless the project itself could turn out to be, their conflict was practically forgotten.

He'd really missed this – talking about science and inadvertently bitching about their teammates. Listening to Tony complain was better than not hearing him at all.

"So I was thinking I should first work on some technology to actually measure and record magic. The most I was able to get were a few readings from Thor and Loki when they were clashing."

"Fury wants something that will negate the effects of magic – is that even possible?"

"In theory, yeah. But is it actually_ practical_? I'm not completely convinced."

"How so?"

"Well, I can't cancel something out if I don't know how it works. It'd be like expecting Thor to assemble a microwave, or Fury to figure out how to unclasp a bra - or trying to stop ageing or dying . We can't because we don't fully understand it, and even if we do, we don't know how to reverse it. I'm too unfamiliar with magic."

"So basically you'd need to learn magic yourself?"

"Or replicate it."

Bruce watched the way Tony pursed his lips as he flicked through Shield's file on Loki. There was really nothing more to say – the task was impossible, but so far Tony was showing no signs of giving up. He'd been staring at Loki's file for the past ten minutes, as though hoping there was something in there that would reveal the formula he was searching for.

That one being was everything Tony would never understand. There was something dangerous about that idea, especially when considering Tony's investing nature, but Bruce suddenly liked the idea of this project even less.

It was like Fury was setting Tony up to fail.

A cold hand of ice gripped at the insides of his chest, and he watched the way Tony rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration before turning over one of the loose pages, tracing his fingers down the neatly typed lines of transcripts from Loki's brief imprisonment.

_Is this all just a distraction?_

Bruce thought back to the day before, just before the conference, when Fury had taken Hawkeye aside. They'd spoken quietly, and throughout the entire time that Tony had been patched in, Clint had simply stared, as though seeing something he hadn't seen before.

_Or searching for something he hadn't yet found._

Bruce wasn't a man of intellect without reason. He'd get to the bottom of this.

While his team had come far in treating him no differently and accepting his change, Tony had done so from the very start. The man didn't tread eggshells around him, he outright acted as though the 'Other Guy' was nothing truly spectacular, and Bruce didn't even truly understand why he appreciated that so much.

Tony was the only one who had treated him like just another man from the moment they first met. It hurt him how quickly his friend had spiralled downwards.

Bruce would protect Tony no matter what, even if the other man didn't know it. He had to find out what was happening with Shield.

.:.

* * *

**A/N:** Two sides to every story – or, well, in this case there's several sides. I can't even say how relieving it was to use someone else's point of view, however briefly. I just felt that I was being a little too ambiguous about the team.  
I've broken the casing on my laptop screen so I have to be particularly sparing when using it. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the update!

_Hermit: Solitude, contemplation, and thought. Wise from past experience, follows the path slowly but steadily. Withdrawing from the world, communion with one's inner world. _

**Love, MK**


	10. II: Justice

**Card Of Fools  
**

_**X**  
Justice_

.:.  
'

The taste of blood stained Tony's mouth, his lip giving a slight twinge when he licked over the small, insignificant wound where he'd bitten through the skin. Such a bad habit - nervously worrying the edges of his mouth with his teeth - he thought he'd broken it years ago.

Bruce had barely left the Tower, leaving him with the files from SHIELD and a head full of this _stupid_ project.

The fact it was practically an impossible task only made him stubbornly determined not to give up – a salute to his hard-headed, inventive nature. Then again, the fact it was assigned by Fury gave him a borderline compulsive urge to spit on the crisp sheets in his hands. The paper itself reeked of a show of dominance, one that Tony was determined to not let the other man win.

Oh, he'd play along, sure. He'd curl up and hide, pretend for a while that he didn't have enough venom for a bite, but the second Fury thought all was won, he'd uncurl and strike.

It seemed he had two strains of consciousness, because he snapped out of his vindictive thoughts with a startle. _And this is why you don't keep encounters with a megalomaniac god all to yourself. I'm starting to think like the bastard now._

"Hey, Jay, if I put this shit through the shredder, you think Fury'll finally give himself a stroke?"

"It would be ill-advised to test that theory, Sir."

"Maybe I could just tell him I quit. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Hey, Jarvis? I quit."

"Very good, Sir. Should I forward this notice to SHIELD, or are you intending to go rogue?"

Tony made an amused sound, shaking his head at the ceiling. "Please, for the sake of breathing, note my insincerity."

"Noted, Sir."

"I thought you were supposed to be looking after my health, not encouraging me to have a deathwish?" He asked, folding the files under his arm. He used his now freed hand to dab at the small blood spot welling on his lip again.

It glittered bright red on his skin. He rubbed the moisture between his fingers, grimacing at the tacky feeling as it dried and stained, darker between the ridges of his fingerprint.

Jarvis didn't reply to his last jest, and Tony rolled his eyes, approaching the stairs. He avoided the elevator more often than not thanks to Thor's sporadic life lesson. "The _question_ wasn't insincere, you faulty, outdated piece of hardware."

"I apologise, Sir."

"Whatever," he retorted, following childishly with "you're weird."

"The creation is but a reflection of the creator," Jarvis told him, repeating words that sounded fairly familiar. If the AI had a face, Tony would have been glaring at it. A look that would have proved both unimpressive and ineffective with the smirk that was twitching at his mouth, pulling at the broken skin.

"Megabite me."

Finally his lip had stopped bleeding, but now there was an uneven piece of skin, and Tony knew that if he didn't stay conscious of it, he'd chew at it until it bled once more. Before long, his lips would be bitten until they were rough and chapped, and that just didn't appeal to him.

_Probably wouldn't appeal to Loki, either._

Tony nearly slapped himself.

Finally on the level of his workshop, Tony pressed his fingertips for the glass, waiting for Jarvis to scan him in. A matter of seconds, the glass front slid away and granted him access to his chilly, relatively deserted workshop.

For the first time he could remember, Tony hesitated before taking the final step inside.

"Alrighty, Jarv, you're better at all this calculating stuff, so tell me; what do you think the odds are that SHIELD has a motive?"

"My estimations are at one hundred and three percent, Sir."

Tony's lips pursed at that. "Yeah, that sounds 'bout right."

"Pardon, Sir, but you requested to converse with me?"

"Ah, that's right," Tony frowned, feeling oddly nonchalant. He'd completely forgotten.

_How did I forget already?_

Approaching one of the monitors at the bench, he crossed his arms, feeling oddly out of place. Like when he was in some imperative meeting discussing things that would forever affect the company, and while he pretended - and the company let him, all too happy to play along - that Pepper spoke for him because his voice was simply too golden for their ears, it didn't erase the fact he had no clue what was going on around him. And really, Stark Industries was his company, but in everything aside from the name and the new glorious purpose Tony felt like an invader.

Yeah, this feeling was just like that. This was_ his_ workshop, just like it was _his_ company, but he was standing here with his hands tucked under his armpits out of the cold with hardly any idea what to do with himself. He looked at the unfinished circuits on the bench and felt nothing. No desire to create, no need to understand.

"Sir?"

If Jarvis could clear his throat, he definitely would have.

"Okay, uh," he murmured, more to himself than the AI, trying to recall exactly what it was that he wanted to probe Jarvis for. It returned to him, the odd admittance from Jarvis that hinted he had no record of Loki's visits. "Right, lets start with security footage." He paused, trying to think of a specific date. Then he remembered one of the earlier encounters in his workshop, how he'd watched it immediately after. "Relay the last recording I viewed."

"The file is missing, Sir," Jarvis told him without missing a beat.

"What?" Tony felt an odd leap in his chest, the sensation detatched and unlike an emotion that was truly his. The base of his neck prickled with nervousness, but his mind felt serenely blank. He cleared his throat, uncrossing his arms and leaning his palms on the cool bench, leaning forward to view the screen. "Alright, scan the archives again. Show me the progress."

A flashing blue bar appeared on the screen, file names and locations flickering above entirely too fast to read. All too quickly, thanks to the advanced technology, the scan was complete.

"The search is complete. The result was negative."

Tony remembered the video clearly. He'd watched shortly after Loki had left him, stirrings of arousal rising up from the simple way Loki had breathed in the scent of his skin. At first glance, Tony had thrown a wrench at the God, yet somehow there they had ended up, stood in the centre of his workshop, without a single sign of aggression forthcomming from the enemy. It all seemed so long ago now.

Here he was, searching for any trace that any of this was real. He hadn't accessed security since, certainly not to delete anything.

"Jarvis, show me the footage from last night, before I conked out."

The video appeared, running through the end of his prank on Director Fury, and his brief conversation with Jarvis at the end. His face in his hands, elbows on the desk, he watched the visage of himself stiffen, head lift, then suddenly he seemed frozen for the longest time.

Finally, he watched himself stand up and move over to the cot in the workshop, slide off his shoes, and crawl under the sheets, the lights flickering off somewhere during the process. Tony didn't bother to register when.

_Holy shit, am I actually going crazy?_

"Call Natasha, tell her Thor better be on his way. Alone. And quell her paranoia while you're at it – something good, like team bonding, or whatever."

"It shall be done, Sir."

.:.

* * *

Bruce lowered his gaze to the floor, several nameless SHIELD agents eyeing him as they pass in the hallway. He dipped his shoulder as he circled to give them a wide space, not willing to touch.

The hallways were too thin here, all the air feeling as though it'd been sucked out through the metal grill that rattled underfoot. He could already hear their whispers, and they weren't even in the next corridore.

_For Tony_, he reminded himself, burrying his unclipped fingernails into the palms of his hands as he rounded the next corner, feeling lost and nervous and all kinds of tormented.

He tried restraint, he tried to calm himself, but all he could think about as he paced the blindingly plain halls was the way Tony had jostled him with an electric shock then stared into his eyes on the first day they met, trying to tear a vicious reaction out of him. The fact the man had been aware yet uncaring, that single moment cementing any doubts he had against the other scientist, had awoken a fondness within him. Even the Other Guy recognised Tony as a life worth saving.

A person like the flesh under the Ironman suit, he'd thought, could be neither good nor bad. Tony Stark had proven to the world that he could be either, but he'd chosen his path.

Bruce wasn't sure when it started, but he'd taken to calling Tony his best friend; the man had a good heart and a complicated mind, and would sooner die than watch SHIELD lock his fellow Avenger away, no matter what the cause. Such an unlikely man had proven to him that not all people couldn't see past the outer layers.

Walking these halls without Tony at his side made Bruce feel naked, and it wasn't a feeling that helped the itch of violence that crawled under his skin, sparking like a live wire. The stares and the whispers, the way the glassy lenses of the cameras followed him, even the intense silence without nonsense sarcastic chatter filling his ears, all nudged him just that little closer to desperation the longer he followed the narrow closing halls.

Somehow, Tony made Bruce feel safe, like the man would tear the world apart for him, all while smiling and waving and paying off the media to put them both on a pedestall while doing so.

_He could afford it, too, the arrogant bastard, _he thought fondly, before a rearing of emotional pain ached impossibly in his chest. He very nearly punched a wall with the feeling, settling with grinding his teeth until his jaw protested.

Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to come looking for a familiar face while unnannounced, particularly in such a sterile, alien environment as SHIELD headquarters. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to do so with his scientific brain picking and pulling everything apart for hours on end, either.

By the time he found at least one person he was looking for, he had a conscience flooded full of suspicions, theories, and one hell of an overprotective urge.

At the end of this next hall he slunk into, two of his teammates were conversing. Clint and Steve were talking, stiff and quiet, voices hushed as though aware of the security cameras trained solely on them.

Taking a deep breath and resuming the step he hadn't even known he'd faltered on, his eyes flickered from one to the other, trying to work out the best way to approach the question burning in the front of his mind.

The moment Clint glanced over at him, the burning spread over his whole body, and before he'd even noticed, he'd advanced in a few angry strides, fisting his hands into the archer's coat and tearing him away from his conversation, slamming the other man against the wall.

"Bruce!" Steve exclaimed in shock, taking a short step back before noticing the throbbing veins beginning to rise under the skin on the back of the Doctor's hands. As soon as he'd recollected himself, his temporary housemate stepped up again, strong hands at both Bruce's and Clint's shoulders, forcing a space between them.

Bruce didn't care.

"You tell me and you tell me now, Barton – what the hell is Fury up to!"

"Bruce," Steve started gently beside him, voice a contrast to the firm hand now pressing harder against his shoulder, "calm down-"

"Tell me!"

Clint let out a staggered exhale as Bruce pulled him away from the wall just far enough to slam him back into it. "Jesus, fuck, let me down!"

"Because I know there's something going on here, and I don't care if Tony wants to play ignorant, but he knows something's up too. So you better give me answers!"

Bruce's vision was blurring, heat grasping at his windpipe, but he couldn't let it absorb him. He needed to know. Even if his skin suddenly felt too tight for his body, and his fists were shaking with the effort to destroy the thick material of Clint's jacket, he refused to let the ache consume him, no matter how painful.

Oh but how he longed to break and destroy-

"Fury thinks Tony's been compromised, alright!" Clint shouted, eyes darting around as though looking for an escape, longing to lash out and fight but avoiding it for the sheer knowledge that it was too dangerous. "And if not compromised, he thinks Loki has a motive for him. Christ, calm the fuck down, man, you're scaring the shit out of me!"

Bruce's grip on Clint's jacket disappeared without even realising he'd commanded his hands to let go, and for a moment he was aware that the Other Guy was warring with him for control.

He had a taste of the pleasure of sheer destruction, and while it was so tempting, the corners of his vision began to clear, and soon enough, Steve was backing him away from the gasping archer who had collapsed against the wall out of shock and probably fear.

Steve was giving him that soft look that both he and Thor gave sometimes. "Bruce," the larger man addressed, "why do I get the feeling nobody briefed you yet?"

"All anybody told me was that I had to go deliver some files to Tony," Bruce admitted, staring emptily at the wall beside Clint's head. As the archer straightened, he moved right into the Doctor's line of sight.

"Did he show an interest in any particular files?"

Bruce opened his mouth, then slammed his teeth shut like a cage around the words that almost escaped.

_He lingered on anything to do with Loki._

Clint was watching him just as his codename suggested. Bruce grit his teeth. "No."

Those eyes staring at him only narrowed, and Bruce knew he'd been caught out. "If you say so," the man said instead, but he didn't allow himself to hope. Clint was a spy, after all. Everything, no matter how insignificant, was a secret.

"So, have we all calmed down?" Steve asked levelly, still appearing readied as though he thought he may have to leap between his two teammates once more. Bruce gave a stiff nod before the tall blonde calmed. The shorter blonde spoke up.

"We didn't tell you in the hopes that you might be able to strip relevant information from your meeting," Clint continued, "Fury's orders." The way he said it made Bruce double back to look at the spy a little closer.

Something in Barton's eyes told him that the archer wasn't particularly happy with the plan.

"Are we betraying Tony?" Bruce asked then, quietly to mask his anger, staring between both of his teammates.

Steve frowned, but didn't answer straight away. "That's a harsh way to put it."

"But are we?"

Clint answered this time, fooled by Bruce's meek words. "No, we're not."

_Spies lie_, Bruce reminded himself as Steve gestured for them both to follow him. Clint waved his his hand, indicating for the Doctor to go first, but his only response was to smile falsely and shake his head in silence. A tense moment passed before Clint moved ahead, squared shoulders and fingers flexing by his sides.

"We're all concerned about him," Steve spoke without looking back as he lead them back the way Bruce came. The Doctor found he believed him. "Don't mistake necessary concern for betrayal. We're conducting an investigation, and if it all goes smoothly and our doubts are disproven, Tony needn't even know about it."

"What Tony needs is professional help, not SHIELD giving him bogus projects and breathing down his neck. He doesn't need his team staring at him with their hands over their weapons, ready to draw."

At this, Clint stopped flexing his fingers by his sides, crossing his arms over his chest and burying his hands against his sides. It took Bruce a moment to realise that the movements had been a compulsive itch to reach for the bow that wasn't present on his being. The archer didn't look back to see that Bruce had begun staring at the back of his head.

"What kind of help do you think he needs?" Steve asked.

Bruce didn't answer for a few moments, but when he did, the word came out with slightly more force than he'd intended. "Friends."

He wasn't expecting Steve to stop solid, turning back to look over Clint's shoulder at the Doctor. Clint and Bruce paused, waiting for Steve to say something, but the man only frowned harder when the look in the scientist's eyes told him that he wasn't going to elaborate.

The rest of the trip to the conference room was made in silence, the air aound them teeming with so many unspoken words Bruce wasn't sure they'd ever voice.

_For Tony,_ he reminded himself.

.:.

* * *

The chill on the top of Stark Tower rolled down Tony's body as he paced, prompting him to zip up the leather jacket he'd slid on, burrying his hands in his pockets and kicking idly at the gravel.

Each second stretched on longer than possibly normal when one was waiting for someone to arrive, mind athrust with doubts and questions, imagination running in loops as to how the interaction would play out.

He wanted to put Thor's loyalty to the test, to ask all about the things Loki had suggested. He wanted to know if Thor knew anything, anything at all.

He wanted to know if Thor could feel it.

He wanted to know if he was going round the bend.

The moment the Thunder God appeared in the distant sky, all casual conversation left him, and before he even knew it, his hands were back out in the cold air, twisting anxiously. Bouncing on the balls of his feet as he watched Thor grow closer, Tony felt each second crawling along as though they were years.

As the blonde God landed, Tony's body set in stone, unmoving.

"Tony, friend – your invite surprised me greatly!" Thor greeted with cheer, dropping the large bulk of metal weaponry on the ground as he stepped forward, arms out as though to embrace him. He saw the look on Tony's face, the wariness pinching the corners of his eyes and mouth, and lowered his hands back to his sides. "Is everything alright, Man of Iron?"

"Yeah, uh, yes-no. No, it's not...err...Thor, we're friends, right?"

"I should hope so," Thor answered with confusion.

"And friends help each other out when they're in trouble, yeah?"

"What is this about? Are you in danger"

Tony's teeth grazed over his lip. "I don't really know." Worry immediately darkened Thor's oceanic eyes, now the colour of stormy sea. "I need to ask you – what do you know?"

Startled, Thor's eyes widened, but there was a cautiousness under his expression that had that foreign emotion stuttering somewhere inside him, a feeling he wasn't sure was his own. A jar of frightened butterflies had cracked open in his stomach. When the normally assertive God's voice quaked with his words, Tony knew he had Thor in a corner.

"Friend, I'm not sure I understand."

"No, you understand. Perfectly well. You know exactly what I'm talking about – what do you know of what's been going on around here?"

Thor's jaw was clenched, and for a moment Tony thought the Immortal was going to summon Mjolnir into his fist. His furiously burning eyes were throbbing with something other than wrath, however, as the sky above them cast over with grey.

"That you are troubled, I know. Of what ails you, I do not."

"You know, there's this one thing that really stands out about you and your brother," Tony said almost casually, satisfied when Thor's heavy stare immediately whipped up to his face. He hoped that Thor was lying, because if he wasn't, this sentence was going to condemn him. "See, unlike him, you can't lie for shit."

The wind whipped aggressively, nipping at whatever bits of Tony's skin that were still exposed. The force of the sudden gale pushed Tony off balance, nearly knocking him over, causing the man to glance around him suspiciously.

If the sternly masked expression on Thor's face was anything to go by, he had a reason to be anxious.

"Man of Iron," Thor began, the tone of his voice startling the human, who hadn't heard the God speak in such a commanding way since their first rough encounter, "I should caution you to mind your tongue."

"Yeah, that's something I've never quite been good at," Tony retorted, scoffing haughtily. He tried to casually pass off the way he'd nearly been toppled by a breeze by adjusting his stance, crossing his arms over his chest and covering the Arc out of both habit and subconscious fear. "Surely you'd know that by now. So sorry if anything I say rubs you the wrong way, but I'm not in the mood for playing games."

Thor gave him a pointed look. "It is not I whom you would abstain from offending."

_Alright, fuck this_, Tony mentally spat, exhausted with all the dodging questions and ambiguous answers. Before he managed to get a word out, the breeze all but disappeared, leaving the roof of the Tower unnaturally silent and still. Neither he nor Thor moved, though the golden God's eyes stormy roamed about all visible corners of the building.

A sudden vibration against his thigh had Tony jumping beneath his skin, startled. Thor gave the gasping human a frowning look of observation as he scrabbled his mobile from his front pocket, answering the call before seeing who was on the other end.

"Yo, Stark here," he managed to speak evenly despite the pulse thrumming angrily in his neck, secretly glad for the anti-climactic ending to his and Thor's 'little talk'.

"Stark," Fury's depressing voice filled his ear; he wasn't so glad anymore. "You and Odinson need to get your asses into gear yesterday!"

"Woah, what's happen'n, Capt'n?"

"It's Loki," Fury replied, and Tony pretended for the moment that his chest didn't tighten at the name.

.:.

* * *

**A/N:** I am most sincerely sorry for the length between updates – my computer has been through the wars this past month, and my screen is barely hanging on. Typing has become a difficult thing to do, unless I am on my other laptop, which is more counterproductive than anything else.

I truly hope I can manage the next update in less time – I am so sorry everyone! To be truly honest, I hadn't expected the amount of follows and favs (and especially not reviews) this story managed to attain in such a short time, and this only makes me feel doubly worse that it's been so long.

I had to get a little more into the action, so the next chapter is gonna probably be a little confusing, but I hope you're all keeping up and enjoying so far!

_Justice: Fairness, impartiality, legal issues. Reminder that every action has its consequences, signifies responsibilities and significant choices. Trying to do the right thing, holding on to what you believe in, or having to face the truth._

**Love, MK**


End file.
